That
is until Rachel leaves a gate open and Thomas falls into the stream and
drowns (a woeful deus ex machina, especially since there is a low-bowed
boat right next to him, but we’ll save criticisms for later). Grief
tears their marriage apart and Rachel heads off to a remote house in
Scotland to try and overcome a severe case of writer’s block. It’s
there she meets a handsome lighthouse keeper, Angus McCulloch, who
helps her to feel again and fill those blank pages with words. But just
as she thinks she has found something approaching happiness, the locals
have a disturbing thing to tell her about Angus. And then there are the
spooky little signs that her dead son might be floating around the
place too… With its suspenseful moments thanks largely to superb cinematography and eerie locations, Half Light is a spine-tingler in the same vein as The Sixth Sense or Stir of Echoes. However, Aussie writer/director Craig Rosenberg (who wrote the screenplay to the underrated After The Sunset),
seems to struggle with his convoluted subject matter. The major twist,
when it comes, is unexpected – but only because it’s so implausible as
to be absurd and therefore impossible to predict. The finale, too,
while tying things up neatly, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and
seems divorced from the movie’s themes up to that point. Further, any fan of Stephen King will note Half Light’s many similarities to the book Bag of Bones
– and Rosenberg’s influences are further exposed when he drops in
little SK references, such as the title of Rachel’s first book,
'Dreamers Awake'. King has frequently referred to life’s more
incredible events as “dreaming awake”. Half Light
presses all the buttons a skin-creeper should (Moore and Matheson
ensure it has some charm in the duller scenes as well) but judged
overall it is too derivative and too similar to movies that are vastly
superior to it. EXTRAS No Extras. Conclusion:
Movie 60% Extras: N/A
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