The story has an outline which had potential, only it ends up falling flat on its face trying to rush everything instead of slowly building to show just how successful the previous ideas have been.įantasy/Horror – The fantasy horror in the film becomes one when we get to follow the ideas to why the girls have become gifted suddenly, only the horror is just darkness, loud noise, something appears on screen. Parents need to know that Down a Dark Hall is based on the classic gothic YA novel by Lois Duncan.

The scares don’t come fast enough for what is meant to be happening and when they do it is just too dark to see anything happening. Once she arrives at Blackwood, Kit encounters eccentric headmistress Madame Duret (Uma Thurman) and meets the school's only other students, four young women. The story never really gets started if we are honest because we focus on the so called gifts the girls are showing, which they never had before getting to the school, should be more interesting, only it just felt rushed. Kit (AnnaSophia Robb), a difficult young girl, is sent to the mysterious Blackwood Boarding School when her heated temper becomes too much for her mother to handle. Duncan's Gothic suspense novel, DOWN A DARK HALL, is being filmed for the Big Screen and will probably be released in.

That book has now been republished by Scholastic along with two sequels, News for Dogs (2009) and Movie for Dogs (2010). Story – The story follows five girls sent to a boarding school only for not everything to be as it seems and they must unlock the truth before the evil within the walls comes for them. The 1971 children's book Hotel for Dogs was released as a theatrical movie in 2009, starring Emma Roberts. Uma Thurman isn’t the most convincing as the Madame, while most of the fellow girl performances are just the basic through the film. In Down a Dark Hall, Kit Gordy sees Blackwood, towering over its gates, and a wave of fear shivers through her, bringing one word to mind - evil. Performances – AnnaSophia Robb in the leading role does a solid enough job, we could see more development from her character, but she does all she can with her role.

Down a dark hall novel