Metacritic: 38 out of 100 | User Rating: 2.5 out of 10
Rotten Tomatoes: 14% out of 100 | 33% out of 100
Box Office | Domestic: $8 Million | Global: $22 Million | Totaling: $31 Million | Budget: $20 Million (estimated)
Here is a film that butchers the source material and was created as if intended to tank the 20th Century Fox Walden Media partnership on purpose. Everything that could be done wrong in a children’s fantasy film was exceedingly crafted to do just that, go wrong. Even though this film has been heralded highly as a Harry Potter clone the book was written in 1973. Another case in point that due to the Harry Potter craze books like this were getting optioned and adapted to compete with the juggernaut property, if not capitalize on wizarding fever. This film unfortunately rose to the occasion to become one of the biggest failures in the genre and succeeded in bombing so spectacularly that it made less money in the theaters than it cost to produce the film reels for those theaters.
The only saving grace, if you can call it that, for this film was Christopher Eccleston’s performance as The Dark Rider, a character that takes from a cornucopia of existing archetypal roles. The Ring Wraiths from Tolkien come to mind the most. Eccleston, ripe from playing the Doctor a year prior on the reboot of the Doctor Who series, was not enough to make this film great. Internet savvy children and their parents the world over had outcries toward the failed film that literally ignored the source material for a watered down Hollywood style production that was more reminiscent of A Kid in King Arthurs Court than it was adapting The Dark is Rising. Sequels have not been made and short of another company regaining the rights and rebooting the beloved children’s book another entry is doubtful.
Personal Ranking: ★ (Awful)
Originally published October 28, 2014. Updated April 15, 2018.
