Down A Dark Hall Blu-Ray Review
By Paul Rudoff on Oct. 13, 2018 at 11:30 PM in Home Video, Horror

Down A Dark Hall (2018) is based on the novel of the same name by author Lois Duncan, who also wrote the novel upon which I Know What You Did Last Summer was based. Is this new movie as good as that one was? Read on to find out...

Down A Dark Hall is the story of Katherine "Kit" Gordy (AnnaSophia Robb), a difficult young girl who is sent to the mysterious Blackwood Boarding School when her heated temper becomes too much for her mother to handle. Once she arrives at Blackwood, Kit encounters eccentric headmistress Madame Duret (Uma Thurman) and meets the school's only other students - Veronica (Victoria Moroles), Izzy (Isabelle Fuhrman), Ashley (Taylor Russell), and Sierra (Rosie Day) - four young women who are also headed down a troubled path. Locked in the remote Gothic house without internet, cell phones and all trace of modern technology, Kit watches as all of the students each develop extreme obsessions for mathematics and the arts, none of which they ever had before. She soon realizes that supernatural forces are at work, and they all will suffer a horrible fate if nothing is done to stop them.

AnnaSophia Robb is Katherine
This is a movie that you don't see too often these days. Instead of a million and one jump scares - there is only one - or lots of gore or scary CGI, it's an old-fashioned, dark, atmospheric haunted house film. It reminded me of the 1963 classic, The Haunting, and Down A Dark Hall would not look out of place in black and white. Heck, if it got any darker, it would be in black and white...well, black at least! Director Rodrigo Cortes fills the frames with lots of shadowy figures, so you're never quite sure what you're seeing, you just know that something is there It's that kind of subtlety that is sorely missing in most mainstream horror films.

Victoria Moroles is Veronica
I love these types of horror films, and this one certainly kept my interest from start to finish. That said, the ending felt a little lacking. I'm still not sure what Madame Duret's motivations were. She clearly said it wasn't for fame or fortune, so what was she getting out of her scheme? What were her co-conspirators getting out of it, either? Her right-hand woman, Mrs. Olonsky (Rebecca Front), went through with it in order to see her son again, but that's the only motivation that was clear to me.

Isabelle Fuhrman is Izzy
Even though there are only five students, as expected, you don't really get a chance to get to know any of the secondary characters. AnnaSophia Robb is the main star, so of course, her character is the most developed. Surprisingly, although Isabelle Fuhrman is second-credited, it's Victoria Moroles that feels like the "co-star". Still, each one of the five young actresses gets a moment or two to shine, which really makes you wish you could spend more time with all of them. As an aside, Isabelle Fuhrman was the creepy little girl in Orphan (2009), and it was fun to see her again here.

Taylor Russell is Ashley
On a side note, shame on the Lionsgate marketing department for promoting the film as "from the producers of The Twilight Saga" (the author of Twlight, Stephenie Meyer, is one of the producers). Yeah, I get that the Twilight films are super popular, but Down A Dark Hall is as much like those films as Ghostbusters is. The audience that likes Twilight will find this film to be too slow and dark, with not enough romance. It would have been more beneficial to the film if they promoted it as "from the author of I Know What You Did Last Summer and the director of Buried".

Rosie Day is Sierra
At a runtime of 1:36:25, Down A Dark Hall is presented in its original 2.39:1 aspect ratio with an 1080p transfer. On the audio side, there's an English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio audio track. The film includes English SDH and Spanish subtitles. The first print run includes a slipsleeve. Interestingly, the movie was filmed between October and December 2016, and bears a 2016 copyright date, so it took two years for it to be released.

Uma Thurman is Madame Duret
All of the bonus features that can be found on the disc are in HD.
- Welcome To Blackwood: Venturing Down A Dark Hall (20:55) - The cast and director talk about the film and their roles therein. Clips are seemingly cut from an EPK. It ends with a lengthy bio screen dedicated to author Lois Duncan, who passed away in 2016 shortly before the movie went into production.
- Deleted Scene (2:25) - Kit and Jules play a piano duet, which would have appeared around 42:40 in the movie, between when he finds her at the piano after her dream and when they kiss before his mother walks in. Footage has not been finished; the world outside the windows has not been green-screened in, and the camera and equipment are clearly reflected in the side of the piano.
- Trailers (4:37) - I Still See You and KIN. Both are also shown on disc boot-up.

Director Rodrigo Cortes and Uma Thurman
Down A Dark Hall is available on Blu-ray and DVD. The original novel is available, too.

Jules Duret (Noah Silver) and Kit (AnnaSophia Robb)
All images were taken from the IMDB gallery of the film, or were provided by Lionsgate. The headshots were cutdown from the character posters. The Blu-ray has been provided by Lionsgate for review on this site.
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