Melissa suffers from amnesia. When she slowly regains her memory, the world isn't what it supposed to be.Melissa suffers from amnesia. When she slowly regains her memory, the world isn't what it supposed to be.Melissa suffers from amnesia. When she slowly regains her memory, the world isn't what it supposed to be.
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- TriviaDarkness falls was shot only with a crew of two including the director, Jarno Lee Vinsencius.
Featured review
Beautiful setting, compelling premise, suspicious undercurrents
I don't usually review short films, because there is seldom an occasion for me to watch them. Especially 15 minute shorts
Especially 15 minute shorts with complex science fiction themes. So I have very little context, except for when I was in film school. But even my student 16mm film from 1986, which was also a complex sci-fi horror, was 30 minutes. To be fair, my film was MOS because there was too much demand on the school's Nagra and I barely had the money to print the film as it was
And my actors were just film students not real actors. But still, using my film as a basis of comparison, the cinematography of DARKNESS FALLS blows it out of the water so far it leaves orbit.
The beautiful opening shots of the winter forest were so nice, especially the flyover. And there were other moments that revealed a good instinct for how a camera's field of view can be leveraged to build anxiety.
DARKNESS FALLS is trying to convey a lot of information in a short span of time, but Swedish director Jarno Lee Vinsencius centralized that info-transfer on particular dialog scenes and lingered in silence on other scenes in order to mount tension and work on the character of Melissa. (More on her in a moment.) In fact, the mental pacing of the film accelerates from start to finish, compelling you to want to speed up the first half and slow down the second half. I think this is a natural consequence of having 15 minutes to tell a story with multiple objectives: to set a mood and introduce an askew character (the first half) and to deliver a situational back-story and final conflict (the second half), ending with a dramatic impact. But maybe it was also partially because the language is foreign to me, and I had to quickly digest English subtitles loaded with curious background information.
As you take this journey with Melissa you wonder, "What happened?" Then you wonder, "What is happening?" That leads to, "What is going to happen?" Which brings you crashing back to, "What the heck just happened?" There were shots that seemed to stare at Melissa with no action at all, and momentarily it reminded me of UNDER THE SKIN (a film which took that style to an extreme that had me wondering if the projector froze up). But Vinsencius is doing this on purpose, because there is something going on the background he wants you to see. Or to be more accurate: something he wants you to *think* you see. This makes Melissa seem vulnerable, and that generates empathy.
This empathy begs us to trust her, though, and that's where it gets clever. Actress Joanna Häggblom and Vinsencius seem to be conspiring to make you conflicted about Melissa, and not know why. It's not so much about what we see of her tale, or how she behaves It's more about what we don't see, and how she doesn't behave.
This is a girl with amnesia, awakening in the woods with no idea how she got there. But soon thereafter she finds her way to a town and manages to rent a hotel room. We were not permitted to see that transaction. She did not even know who she was at this point, but I would have imagined she'd have found identification like a driver's license or a credit card in her overcoat. We weren't allowed to see her investigate, or call the police. Strange So let's suppose she paid in cash and had no identification on her person and felt too frightened to call the authorities And we move on After the main title, we have jumped forward in time (we're not sure how far), and we see that she's paid for psychotherapy also, is living in an apartment, and apparently knows her name. So we are led to believe that some memory is coming back to her, but we are again troubled with questions. How can one have an apartment without having friends and family call or visit who would give more clues as to how she ended up in the woods? Did she not have any calendar or other means to track her schedule? Is she unemployed? If so, where's her money coming from? There was very little time in the story to address these questions, to be sure. But even a rapid montage would have covered plenty of ground. The filmmaker chose to skip certain details that would have allowed the audience to understand Melissa better, and I found that suspicious.
When the character of David is introduced, it gets weirder, especially because she seems to trust his absurd stories and even runs off with him very suddenly to the middle of nowhere. Brave girl, as I would have been afraid he may be the very person responsible for whatever "trauma" caused her amnesia and put her out into the woods like that. But she was going along with his story quite readily. Was she driven by a subconscious motivation? Some kind of subliminal programming planted in her mind? You watch and decide.
All in all, comparing this film to others of its kind, I would grade the direction with a B+, the producing and cinematography with an A+, the writing and sound with about a C+, and the acting ranging from C to B+ depending on the character. Mr. Vinsencius is clearly talented, but his persistence is what will really pay off. I hope he is able to keep up the good work!
The beautiful opening shots of the winter forest were so nice, especially the flyover. And there were other moments that revealed a good instinct for how a camera's field of view can be leveraged to build anxiety.
DARKNESS FALLS is trying to convey a lot of information in a short span of time, but Swedish director Jarno Lee Vinsencius centralized that info-transfer on particular dialog scenes and lingered in silence on other scenes in order to mount tension and work on the character of Melissa. (More on her in a moment.) In fact, the mental pacing of the film accelerates from start to finish, compelling you to want to speed up the first half and slow down the second half. I think this is a natural consequence of having 15 minutes to tell a story with multiple objectives: to set a mood and introduce an askew character (the first half) and to deliver a situational back-story and final conflict (the second half), ending with a dramatic impact. But maybe it was also partially because the language is foreign to me, and I had to quickly digest English subtitles loaded with curious background information.
As you take this journey with Melissa you wonder, "What happened?" Then you wonder, "What is happening?" That leads to, "What is going to happen?" Which brings you crashing back to, "What the heck just happened?" There were shots that seemed to stare at Melissa with no action at all, and momentarily it reminded me of UNDER THE SKIN (a film which took that style to an extreme that had me wondering if the projector froze up). But Vinsencius is doing this on purpose, because there is something going on the background he wants you to see. Or to be more accurate: something he wants you to *think* you see. This makes Melissa seem vulnerable, and that generates empathy.
This empathy begs us to trust her, though, and that's where it gets clever. Actress Joanna Häggblom and Vinsencius seem to be conspiring to make you conflicted about Melissa, and not know why. It's not so much about what we see of her tale, or how she behaves It's more about what we don't see, and how she doesn't behave.
This is a girl with amnesia, awakening in the woods with no idea how she got there. But soon thereafter she finds her way to a town and manages to rent a hotel room. We were not permitted to see that transaction. She did not even know who she was at this point, but I would have imagined she'd have found identification like a driver's license or a credit card in her overcoat. We weren't allowed to see her investigate, or call the police. Strange So let's suppose she paid in cash and had no identification on her person and felt too frightened to call the authorities And we move on After the main title, we have jumped forward in time (we're not sure how far), and we see that she's paid for psychotherapy also, is living in an apartment, and apparently knows her name. So we are led to believe that some memory is coming back to her, but we are again troubled with questions. How can one have an apartment without having friends and family call or visit who would give more clues as to how she ended up in the woods? Did she not have any calendar or other means to track her schedule? Is she unemployed? If so, where's her money coming from? There was very little time in the story to address these questions, to be sure. But even a rapid montage would have covered plenty of ground. The filmmaker chose to skip certain details that would have allowed the audience to understand Melissa better, and I found that suspicious.
When the character of David is introduced, it gets weirder, especially because she seems to trust his absurd stories and even runs off with him very suddenly to the middle of nowhere. Brave girl, as I would have been afraid he may be the very person responsible for whatever "trauma" caused her amnesia and put her out into the woods like that. But she was going along with his story quite readily. Was she driven by a subconscious motivation? Some kind of subliminal programming planted in her mind? You watch and decide.
All in all, comparing this film to others of its kind, I would grade the direction with a B+, the producing and cinematography with an A+, the writing and sound with about a C+, and the acting ranging from C to B+ depending on the character. Mr. Vinsencius is clearly talented, but his persistence is what will really pay off. I hope he is able to keep up the good work!
helpful•20
- CSHaviland
- Aug 22, 2016
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official sites
- Language
- Also known as
- Mörkret faller
- Filming locations
- Linderöd, Skåne County, Sweden(on location)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime15 minutes
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