Darkness Falls (4½ Stars)

150 years ago a woman in a town called Darkness Falls gave children a gold coin in exchange for their last tooth to fall out. One day she is wrongly accused of murder and swears revenge before she is hanged. Since then she has been visiting children in the night they lose their last tooth and killing them if they dare to look at her.

In many ways this is an old-fashioned horror film. There is very little gore. The horror is created by suspense. That is what makes this film so good. More films should be made like this today.

I have to ask something though. The film lasts 71:49 minutes, which is the perfect length for the story. So why do the final credits have to last 10:20 minutes? That's longer than most films, and a disproportionate length for such a short film. The longest credits I know are the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, "The Fellowship of the Ring". They run 26:24 minutes, after the film ran for 192:23 minutes.

To put it proportionately: LOTR's credits make up 12.1% of the total film length, whereas Darkness Falls' credits make up 12.6%. Was the film's producer trying to set a record? I suspect that he wanted to puff the film's length out to 82:09 to stop it looking too short. It wasn't necessary. The film was just right as it was. I've been told that the watershed is 70 minutes. A film that lasts at least 70 minutes from the beginning to the start of the credits is a full length film, whereas a film that is 69:59 minutes or less is a short film. The one second difference might not make any difference to the average film fan, but it determines which category a film is placed in for film awards, such as the Academy Awards.