Unfairly underrated.How can you not like a film that ends EVERYTHING? ;)

Before I/we begin...a few items...

First off: I really dig this film.
Second: I'm fully prepared for people to yell and for there to be a great moaning and gnashing of teeth at my post. Poor people...all invested in disliking something SO much that they absolutely HAVE to come to said film's boards to tell folks otherwise instead of utilizing critical thinking and being objective and at least taking another look at the film with an open mind...or at least viewing the unrated cut of the film.
Third: I'm really sorry if you saw the film in the theater or the same PG-13 version on dvd. REALLY sorry. By all accounts, that version of the film was an absolute mess and causes the audience (by only some subtleties of the otherwise meaningless cuts) to actually miss great swaths of importance in regards to, not the story, but the full weight of it.
Forth: I realize the film overall isn't perfect and is flawed.
Fifth: Let's just get this out of the way... "the house" didn't do *beep* It really was just and only a house. Yes, it was important to the ritual, but that's really about it. "It" didn't "do" any damn thing.
Sixth: Yeah. There are ghosts of the sacrificed children (because...well...they were murdered after all) and of the cult members who had since died (because...well...they had a strong desire to complete the ritual...so naturally they'd hang around in anger that it had yet to be done and would wish it to be so). So...so what? Why is that a point of contention? It really shouldn't be. It certainly shouldn't be (because it isn't) 'confusing'.

That said...

The film takes it's time. I like that.
The film has a nice, creepy atmosphere. I like that.
The direction and acting wasn't pitch-perfect, but it was rather assured.

But what really sells the film to me is it's absolute hopelessness. The creepy hints in the first third or even the first half I found effective and as the story revealed even greater and more dangerous things at hand, the creepiness and suspense ratcheted up to a point of only this: please don't let this happen.

Buutt...as we all know, it did.

Here's where a number of folks balk.
But it seems to hinge on minor portions of the bigger picture. How did the house do this? How and why did the darkness do that? Why did such-and-such a character do this or that? Why would someone, etc.?
What they're missing is that it DID.
It did.

They did.

The ritual was completed.

Now.

Some folks seem to take issue with or otherwise undersell the end.
It seems people place it in the context of the protagonists being fooled and dying. It seems to be short-sighted in the context of "evil" or "hell" or "demons" or the darkness being 'born' or something into our world.

What those folks seem to be missing is this:
The ritual being completed brings THE DARKNESS back into the full control it had to begin with.
Before the universe as we know it even began, the darkness...that is...the formless and light-less chaos far beyond our tiny, human minds' understanding (and that, being tiny-minded, might label as "evil" or some such...this horrible and hateful and always existing and never-dying "thing" that encompassed ALL of existence and time, was hidden away in the recesses since the universe was born.
Now, the ritual complete, it could return. Fully. Completely.
THE DARKNESS will rule.

This was not just the end of the protagonists.
This was not simply some vague or "hellish" "evil" taking over the world.
This was not just EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH being taken and killed and their very souls devoured.
This was not just the end of ALL life on this planet.
This was NOT only apocalyptic in the sense of this Earth.

This meant the end of EVERYTHING....EVERYWHERE.
The Darkness was to return to it's previous state of rule.

This means the end of the ENTIRE cosmos as we (and perhaps any number of potential lives/civilizations over the entire universe) know it.

The is a film that shows the beginning moments of the the end of EVERYTHING. For forever. Period.

I can...we all can...name any number of films that are apocalyptic. We can all name a number of flicks that assure the end of the entire world pretty much for good.

Can you name any other film that actually chronicles or spells out or gives certainty to the end of the ENTIRETY of reality itself? I sure as hell can't.

"Darkness" is a film that does so. The fact that it's done so by something so far beyond our itty-bitty-teeny-tiny understanding and that it is, from our narrow-minded intellectual perspective, murderous and hateful (though, truly it's far worse than that...we just can't even understand it)...makes it all the more unsettling.

I mean, really... you have to put it in the proper context.
This is the end of the universe. This is the darkness that exists timelessly before coming back full force to exist timeless forever and ever again.
It will take and destroy and consume (and seemingly, 'evil-ly'...'play with/torture') the lives, the life-force, the souls, the energy/whatever of whatever exists (for eternity?).
It will consume ALL. All living things. All life. All light. Even all supposed void, as it is composes of any number of things or at least anti-matter (which is still a 'thing' to "the darkness". All spectrum of electromagnetism. Not just visible light. Ultraviolet, radio waves, gamma rays, X-rays. Every damn thing.
Even super black holes are an existing thing. Next to "the darkness" they are just that: a thing. A teeny, tiny insignificant thing next to the absolute and complete formless, timeless, unyielding and total UN-life of "the darkness".
Now that (in the film) darkness has been given the absolute control it once held over all time and space, everything will cease. Even multiple universes...perhaps even other dimensions. All will end. All will revert to pure and absolute (and from our little human perspectives) baleful chaos and evil. Never-ending. It very well potentially spells even the end of the hope of rebirth of the cosmos. The darkness takes complete and total control for forever. It is...in all senses of our barest understandings: THE TOTAL END. Of freakin' EVERYTHING. FOR FOREVER.

H.P. Lovecraft once wrote of 'cosmic horror'. Of things far more powerful and far beyond our simple understanding no matter how far our civilizations' sciences might progress. This is even beyond that. This is not come ancient and unfathomably powerful ancient, alien thing. This is that which existed far beyond the stretch of time. Existed ever and everywhere. Now it will again. For eternity.

We...our beings...perhaps our souls...every living thing...every culture...every world...every star...every bit of warmth and light and beauty...EVERYTHING that comprises living reality will be destroyed.
Darkness will claim reality once more as it did for countless eons far, far, far before our reality was even born.
It was before and the ritual made it so again.
It IS the end of all things. Period.

That's pretty damn creepy if ya ask me. :)

"The last man on Earth doesn't miss anyone at all!" -Faith In Chaos, Haujobb