“Darkness Falls wasn’t a lot totally different from any old style city on the Atlantic Ocean from Nantucket to Key West. Apart from one factor.”
That one factor, after all, is Matilda Dixon, higher referred to as the Tooth Fairy. Most horror followers possible acknowledge this in-your-mouth ghost from her 2003 big-screen car, however what they won’t notice is, the film Darkness Falls was accompanied by a novelization. The primary of two media tie-ins — the opposite being a single-issue comedian from Darkish Horse — was printed by PocketBooks shortly earlier than the film was launched in theaters. And, like in lots of circumstances, a lot of what ended up on the chopping room flooring will be discovered within the novelization.
Whereas novelizations are usually totally different from their cinematic counterparts, Keith R. A. DeCandido’s literary adaptation of Darkness Falls stays largely true to the film. In reality, this e book makes use of a extra intact model of James Vanderbilt and John Fasano’s unique screenplay, which was based mostly on Joe Harris’ story and quick movie Tooth Fairy. Director Jonathan Liebesman and people others behind the digicam of Darkness Falls made the proper name about sure modifications. Nonetheless, the over-editing additionally had its drawbacks, together with the unlucky downsizing of the film’s antagonist.
Creator DeCandido had the luxurious of increasing on occasions that led to Darkness Falls’ curse. In the meantime, the film condenses Dixon’s origin right into a two-minute prologue doubling as an exposition dump. As one may guess, this discount in Dixon’s life story entailed modifications each huge and small. In keeping with the film’s visible preface, Dixon was an older girl with no husband to talk of, whereas the novelization depicts her as a youthful widow shortly earlier than her dying. A number of years earlier than her public execution in 1841 — after her being wrongly accused of murdering two kids — Matilda’s husband, Sonny, died in a fishing accident. His passing, for sure, had a profound impact on a lady whose sole want was to have kids of her personal.
Picture: Emma Caulfield and Lee Cormie’s characters, respectively Caitlin and Michael, concern the Tooth Fairy.
Matilda misplaced much more than only a husband within the novelization. With Sonny’s passing, Matilda primarily misplaced her probability at motherhood; Captain Dixon clearly was not able to have a household previous to his dying, seeing as he wished “only a few extra journeys at sea” earlier than settling down. So, motherless and widowed, Matilda did the subsequent neatest thing in Sonny’s absence: she coveted different folks’s children. Her envy, whereas certainly odd, was nothing dangerous. In trade for one’s final child tooth, Matilda supplied a home made deal with — gold cash within the film — to anybody keen to journey to her house by the native lighthouse. Sadly, the townsfolk of Darkness Falls took this gesture in unhealthy religion and acted on their preexisting prejudice towards the Dixon widow.
After studying the novelization, the suggestion that Darkness Falls is a supernatural twist on the psycho-biddy (or hagsploitation) subgenre will not be so baseless. Matilda Dixon doesn’t fulfill the exact standards for a mean psycho-biddy; she higher meets the age requirement within the film, but it’s the novelization that establishes her as a gorgeous girl whose psychological well being steadily declined as she grew older, lonelier and extra ostracized. The necessary catalyst of waning glamor is missing in Darkness Falls, solely as a result of Matilda’s deteriorated sense of self and postmortem rampage will not be tied to her look. And after being handled as such in life, the Tooth Fairy grew to become an actual monster in dying.
Matilda will not be the one character in Darkness Falls whose backstory was diminished within the film’s last lower. Within the novelization, the inevitable hero, Kyle Walsh, begins out as a troubled preteen who does little to endear himself to readers. This thornier tackle younger Kyle mocks his friends’ class displays — maybe deservedly so as a result of each child was churning out the identical whitewashed report on Darkness Falls and the Tooth Fairy legend — earlier than stabbing his bully within the again with a protractor. The film went in a unique route than anticipated throughout rewrites and reshoots, so there was now not a necessity to ascertain Kyle as an delinquent youth.
Picture: The Tooth Fairy.
In what grew to become the film’s remarkably efficient opener — and, total, its greatest set-piece — DeCandido is initially imprecise about who actually killed Kyle’s mom within the novelization. That is on account of earlier plans to hide the existence of the Tooth Fairy till in a while, and having the viewers consider Kyle (performed by the late Chaney Kley) was killing everybody. As laborious as it’s to think about Darkness Falls as something however a barefaced film a couple of vengeful phantom, this rug-pull wouldn’t have felt misplaced. In that present horror local weather, ridiculous plot twists weren’t uncommon. Having Kyle be the purple herring, solely to then reveal a ghost was the perpetrator all alongside, nevertheless, may not have gone over too nicely with viewers in some way anticipating a completely totally different form of film. However, the regrettable lack of suspense might be attributed to this alteration in recreation plan.
Liebesman shot Darkness Falls “with no firmly set design for the Tooth Fairy in place.” The film’s spectral villain skilled a number of makeovers over the course of manufacturing earlier than finally selecting Stan Winston Studio’s proposal. The ultimate look of Matilda, one resembling a lady with extreme burns throughout her physique, is in contrast to the earlier design that was immortalized by McFarlane Toys. The novelization’s portrayal of the Tooth Fairy is nearer consistent with the Winston mannequin, though the writing submits Matilda’s picture as extra grotesque and putrid. DeCandido wrote of Matilda’s traumatized visage: “There have been burns throughout her face, half her lips weren’t even there anymore, her nostril was withered, and her brow was a crackling mass of purple flesh.” Whereas Matilda’s unmasked film mug will not be fairly as ghastly-looking because the novelization’s description, the disclosing over the last act will not be solely a horrific sight to behold, it’s a testomony to sensible results in horror.
Darkness Falls will not be fondly remembered, at the same time as horror audiences look again extra kindly on the style’s erratic but experimental 2000s interval. And the probabilities of this film receiving an outpouring of optimistic reappraisal appears unlikely. All of the preliminary criticisms stay spot on: the undercooked script, the paper-thin characters, and a scarcity of scares. Pushing previous that, nevertheless, there may be nonetheless the possibility for some meager enjoyable on this insubstantial however engaging ghost story.
Silly studio meddling in the end ruined Darkness Falls’ possibilities to be as totally creepy as its opening sequence. Certainly seeing an excessive amount of of the Tooth Fairy on display made her much less intimidating. Possibly even goofy. The novelization’s prequel elements, however, give Matilda extra weight as a sympathetic villain. Anybody who thought she was squandered in a mediocre film is inspired to hunt out the novelization. If not that, a minimum of the standalone comedian that particulars the identical tragic historical past of Matilda Dixon.
Picture: The quilt of the Darkness Falls novelization.
