October Horror Challenge 2017 #86: "The Darkness (2016)"

I've wanted to see this movie since it came out last year. It has Kevin Bacon in it, which is enough to make me need to see it just because I love him. Plus it's made by some of the same people who made "Sinister" and "Insidious," which are both great movies that I love. Even better, it's about a family who go on vacation to a remote location and bring something evil and demonic back with them, which is always intriguing. All these reasons led to me being excited to check this movie out, and I'm stoked that I finally get to see it today.

So as I said before, this movie is about a family who pick up something demonic while they're on vacation, and then it follows them home and starts to slowly infect their whole lives. Stupid demons, always ruining everything. Rhada Mitchell plays the mom in this movie, and Kevin Bacon plays the dad, which is great for me because I love both of them. And the family has enough problems before the demonic evil decided to come make everything worse. Their teenage daughter has an eating disorder and their young son is autistic, and the son and daughter aren't getting along, so everything is a big mess and the family definitely doesn't need a demon coming around making things worse.

So here's my thing about this movie. I understand that since their son has autism and sometimes displays strange behaviors, that it might take awhile for the family to realize that something else is wrong. But once more than on family member has been attacked by ghost animals, and your son is talking to a new "imaginary friend" who is telling him to do horrible things, and strange handprints in soot start appearing all over the house, dude, it's probably ghosts. I don't care if you don't believe in ghosts, get over yourself and admit something weird is going on and take steps to get rid of it before it kills you and your family. People who deny that it might be ghosts or demons in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary just get on my nerves.

Maybe I'm just cranky 86 movies into the challenge, but I'm not in the mood for characters to act like assholes and go off yelling at their wives for daring to consider that something evil is going on. I don't care if you're Kevin Bacon, I will reach through this screen and punch you in the damn face. At least he does get on board eventually, and he and his wife work together to figure out how to try to fight the evil. I didn't wind up enjoying this movie as much as I thought I would. I think it just took too damn long to get going, but the acting was solid and it wasn't horrible. I'm still glad I finally got to see it.