And Soon the Darkness (2010)

Two young attractive girls are biking through Argentina. They miss their bus to leave and stay a bit longer, when they get into a fight one of them leaves the other by herself. Big mistake, the girl gets herself kidnapped. Now her friend must try to find her.

The film never tries to elevate the genre that it is in, nor make it interesting. And Soon The Darkness manages to follow the footpath of every film before it, thus making it boring and predictable. First we have our two female characters. One is obviously a trouble maker and the rebel, while the other is more conservative. Guess which one gets herself kidnapped and which one has to rise to the occasion to get her friend back? The two female characters are played by Odette Yustman and Amber Heard, they fit their roles of attractive young females. The roles don't call for anything beyond that really.

The biggest letdown, had to be Karl Urban. His character is somewhat pointless. He doesn't advance the plot, his story line is left unfinished and Urban himself seems to be bored with the material. I like the guy, but he needs to pick better projects than this. Now that I have my biggest letdown out of the way, let me tell you where else this film went wrong.

The main reason for the girl getting kidnapped is due to the character's stupidity. The two girls get into a verbal argument, one storms off leaving the other. Who would leave their best friend in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country? On top of that, they state earlier that they were part of a bike tour group, but got lost from the pack? These point in the film had me scratching my head.

The film doesn't really know what it wants to be either, it reminded me a lot of Turistas. These characters are in a beautiful location, the film knows this and it is shot fairly well. There are bits of torture, yet the film never steers into that Hostel, or Saw territory. It comes off as very tame, I'm surprised it is even restricted. The film can easily be a PG-13 flick.

There are no surprises, you know from the moment you see the characters, who is responsible for what. The film tries to be clever to throw a curveball, but as I mentioned before, we have seen this type of film before and it's obvious where it was going. The film even lacks suspense. The kidnapping scene is poorly done, the climax is also a third rate cat and mouse game. The film fails to create any tension and that was a key element missing from here. Too many things were left unanswered for me. The two people who ran the hotel, do they know anything? Are they in on it? Does the wife try to warn them, but the husband put her in her place? Who knows.

And Soon The Darkness peaked my interest, but is failed to excite me. If Karl Urban was not in it, I would never have bothered with it. You should do yourself a favour too and skip it.