Not much to see here

And so, the legacy of Ringu (1998) lives on…will horror directors never tire, do you think, of creepy little dead girls with long dark hair? Not if John Fawcett’s The Dark (2005) is anything to go by. Sure, it has a good cast and, judging by Fawcett’s previous horror effort, Ginger Snaps (2000) a promising director, but there is little here that rises above straight-to-DVD shocks.

When their young daughter Sarah (Sophie Stuckey) is drowned, James (Sean Bean) and Adèle (Maria Bello) mourn in a remote cottage on the Welsh coast. It’s a community (so the hackneyed script would have us believe) that’s still very close to the ancient legends concerning the links between this world and the next – so, could Ebrill (Abigail Stone), a young girl who appears and claims she died 60 years ago, and bares a startling resemblance to Sarah, be telling the truth to the bereaved parents? Hmmm. What do you think?

This isn’t complete trash, to be fair – it’s just that demanding fright-fiends need a little more than simplistic scaremongering, contrived shock cuts and a really rather dull narrative.

Fawcett’s ‘puberty equals werewolves’ splatter-fest, Ginger Snaps, was far less contrived and thus much more entertaining; here, he has substituted banality enlivened by unashamed editing. For example, a sudden, bright image accompanied by a very loud noise will always make an audience jump, but is it art? Unfortunately, there’s little or no plot momentum to keep the tension up until the next cacophony.

The cast give it their best shot and there are some genuine scares towards the end, but this is really little more than a jump-fest masquerading as a classy ghost story. See it on a Saturday night, but only if you must…

93 mins.