Más negro que la noche (2014) Reviews

• Well, yeah... OK

  carlesmiquel2014-09-24

  I may firstly say that I love some of the people who appear in this film, and one of the actors is someone I love dearly since childhood. They've had pretty heavy roles in some of the most controversial Mexican series of recent times. Their acting is usually very good, but it's a very different thing to make a long-haul telenovela to a proper feature. Said that, this film revolves around a house, a cat and a bunch of girls and a weird lady that try to make us feel uncomfortable. The problem is that they don't succeed on the task. And that's supposed to be the very raison d'etre for a horror movie. If you can recall acting as contrived and stiff as the old lady's, well... I have to pry my brain open to remember one, apart from some very bad comedies. Kudos for the location, cinematography and 3D. The post is superb. Lighting, audio and props, top notch... what you'd expect from a much more expensive film. Thumbs down to the story-telling and the over-the-top acting. These girls could be very nuanced and subtle in some other films, but here... well, yeah, OK. Eréndira Ibarra may be one of those rare gold nuggets that needs a film just for her -this wasn't the one. And I KNOW for sure, she needs a film of her own, because she's a fantastic actress. Here, she's just the cussing tough one. I guess the main problem is all the characters are fleshed out of their own stories and little is revealed to have the time to connect, empathize or feel for them even a slight connection. That puts them out of the way as you can concentrate more on the house, the furniture, the props... which... well, all of them are beautifully captured in glorious 3D. So, in the end, they've got a very polished result, visually, but without bones to lay your teeth on.

• below-standard

  osloj2015-04-26

  Take a bunch of boring, spoiled, know-nothing young women, give them an inheritance, place them inside a fake-looking studio "house" where nothing happens for nearly 2 hours, and what do you get? Well, this film, which is tedious. The attempted use of the "cat, dead aunt and the housekeeper" to scare the audience goes on forever. The lighting of the film ruins the atmosphere, so does the fake CGI exterior of the house. The acting is below-standard and dull. The lighting of the film ruins the atmosphere in the end, so does the fake CGI aunt in the house. The film is tedious, again. It is a remake of "Más negro que la noche" (1975) which was average, but is included on a TV set a girl is watching in this Director Henry Bedwell version. The 1975 film is directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada, who did "Even the Wind Is Afraid" (1968) and "The Book of Stone" (1969) in his trilogy of horror, all equally average and dull.

• Very, very bad

  BrendaPadilla2014-08-14

  Wow... Where to start from... Actors seem to have a background in theater. Their performances are rather exaggerated and fake (but not fake enough for me to think "oh, that's the style of the film"). Logic was a minor element of the film (meaning, it was very ever there). It was ridiculous. Examples: - A man makes a scene because he decides that after one week his girlfriend has changed. As part of his argument, he says that she's not been out lately (really? she moves home and decides not to go out the week of the move; how is that unusual in any way?). - The girls move into the house, which one of them owns. They seem to find it normal that the housekeeper assigns them their rooms, even if they don't like her choices. - The girls organize a party, leave a huge mess, that is magically cleaned in a couple of hours. - And so many other little things that were simply wrong! Finally, I found the main character's hair style very, very annoying. Yeah, I know. Out of all the things I could complain about. Why this? Well, her curls were beauty parlor curls... The type that require your hair to be straightened first and then curled up. She would wake up, and her hair would be ready. Really? Yeah, no.

• Filled with clichés and boring

  alanramirez12015-03-10

  I didn't had huge expectations for this movie, because Mexican horror films usually suck. Being a Mexican, I hate Mexican horror/suspense films, because one thing they don't have is horror. And with "Más Negro Que la Noche", a remake from an old Mexican classic, I prove my point again. I missed it when it was on theaters, and it seemed really good, but I'm thankful I didn't paid more than 30 pesos to rent it. This movie is full of horror clichés, but the movie takes these clichés to another level: A haunted house that looks like something horrible happened there, four unlikeable lead characters that are molded with the typical personalities; the actresses acted like it was a theater play instead of a horror movie, they overreact too much, and the scared faces or screaming were too fake, seems like they didn't even tried. 90 of the 100 minutes of the movie are so boring. Nothing happens during the whole movie, the script is so messy and forced, you wait for at least one character to die but nothing happens. All the "horror" you get is noises, random stuff moving, and a very annoying score that was all over the top, and it attempts to scare you but fails miserably. If you know the Mexican horror movie formula, you'll predict that this movie includes ghosts, a black cat, and an old lady that acts as poorly as the young cast. I recommend you to avoid this one! You'll lose 100 minutes of your time.

• Dismal

  TdSmth52014-10-01

  A girl inherits her aunt's mansion. She used to live there as a kid when she was adopted by the aunt when her parents and sister died. She later was sent to a boarding school. So she does what anyone else would do--move into the place with her three friends but not her boyfriend. There she's welcomed by the creepy and ultra-formal housekeeper. The only request by the aunt is the the niece take care of Becket the black cat. One of the girls has a pet ferret that doesn't get along with Becket. One night the ferret appears dead and the girl blames Becket and eventually will take vengeance. That's when things go awry. The mansion is about as stereotypical as it gets. Like a cheesy haunted house done by Disney. It looks large on the outside with lots of windows but all the rooms are tiny and dark. No sunlight gets in and even when people turn in the lights (which they rarely do), it's still pitchblack. There are spider webs everywhere, dust, mysterious rooms, old junk, pictures, a huge painting of the aunt, etc. So at this point everyone starts seeing, hearing, and dreaming scary stuff. The girl grows distant from her boyfriend and when they throw the lamest housewarming party ever, one of the other girls seduces him, even though or maybe because she's involved with the ugliest guy ever. More and more they start freaking out until we find out what exactly happened at the house years ago when the aunt was young and how that's similar to what is going in the present. Darker Than Night is unfortunately as bad a movie as the reviews and ratings indicate. It's got very little going for it: a cool title for a horror movie that's even more effective in Spanish; the cute Zuria Vega and the stunning Ona Casamiquela, and the performance by Margarita Sanz. That's it. The story is nothing special. And I haven't seen nor care to see the original. The characters are irrelevant, you couldn't care less about these people. For one hour and twenty minutes nothing particularly relevant happens aside from noises. And then when things get hectic it's not particularly impressive either. I saw the 2D version and I didn't see anything worthwhile for 3D. They could have done more with the idea, I'm not sure why they had such low aspirations.