In Darkness Reviews

The Academy Award-nominated film does not disappoint in terms of performances or presentation, except for its length. A good percentage of its 145 minutes is spent in subterranean near-darkness.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

In Darkness is an emotionally tough, well made film that shows that, despite their inherent familiarity, there are still plenty of great stories to emerge from mankind's darkest hour.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The main thrust of the film mines the familiar territory of Schindler's List for sure, but In Darkness distinguishes itself by mixing strong characterizations of the families living underground with lots of suspense and claustrophobia.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

With straits at least as dire as those in The Diary of Anne Frank (and moral dimensions far more murky), In Darkness deals with survival at whatever cost, including compromise of personal principles. [Blu-ray]

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

In Darkness is a complex film as the divisions between acting for mercenary reasons and ethical ones are often uncertain.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Emotionally demanding and cinematically challenging, In Darkness tells us - repeats for us - what we must always remember about human nature: everyone can redeem themselves

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"In Darkness" is a powerful film about those who refuse to yield, either to certain death or to complicity with evil.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

...an extraordinarily well-made film, one that manages to effectively convey small truths about the nature of being human.

Full Review | Original Score: 91/100

For her latest film, Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa) again turns to a fascinating footnote from that chapter in history.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Though the film seems a bit long at almost two and a half hours, Holland needs that time to make the huddled cluster of Jews distinguishable as individuals.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

What lingers aren't Holland's recreated atrocities but simpler, unexpected moments, as when a little girl who has become used to life in a sewer removes a rat from atop her coloring book as nonchalantly as if it were a fallen leaf.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

This tale of fugitive Polish Jews hiding under the streets of Lvov, aided by a reluctant Catholic sewerage inspector, may be based on true events, but it sometimes feels like an entire season of soap opera scripts crammed into feature length.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

When the film ends, you will feel - as do the Jews who return to the surface -that you need to gulp down as much fresh air as your lungs can hold.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

The most consistent and effective element is Robert Wieckiewicz's performance as the plumber...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

For anyone in the mood, this is a solid account of another of those remarkable World War Two stories which simply take your breath away when you watch them unfold on screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Holland does root around in some grubby, previously unexplored corners, but the film never quite breaks free from that conventional structure.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

A claustrophobic film that is dark in almost every sense, but the result is moving.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

It's a long movie, but it compels you to experience something of what it was like to live for 14 months hungry, cold and knowing that at any minute the agents of a cruel, vindictive regime could arrive to treat you like the rats that shared your sewer.

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[E]legantly presented, chock full of moments of dreadful suspense in a horrible milieu... and buoyed by strikingly naturalistic performances...

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Darker than even the sewers it uses as its milieu, Holland's film is unrelenting in its exploration of the limits of cruelty and the birth pangs of humanity. It's a sorrowful film, to be sure, but it's also like nothing you've ever seen before.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5