The Mutota Chronicles In fact, "Chronicles of Darkness" is the pilot of the series-screen adaptation of the role-playing game "Midnight", from which for financial reasons they decided to make a full-fledged film. Which is quite noticeable, because in the finale, the movie simply stops, without answering any of the hundreds of questions that have accumulated. For starters, what did I learn about the world of Midnight more than I’ve ever played D&D-like games? Nothing specific. First, it's full of painful cliches of the fantasy genre. Elves, sorcerers, prophecies, dark lords are all here. Secondly, he is extremely hostile to the audience “out of topic”, in other words – personally I did not understand a damn thing. The whole film on the screen amid murky, boring scenery roams murky, boring characters, with slurred motivation and delusional dialogue. A common situation is when the characters have a conversation full of sarcastic hints, references and winks in both eyes, and the viewer is puzzled to scratch in the back of the head, trying to make out what these people are talking about. Perhaps it will be easier for fans who can easily navigate all these Odrendores and Izradors, but I am not sure of the existence of such in our region.
But even if you take into account the focus of the film on fans, artistically it is simply a failure. The dull, dull palette of the picture sets the mood for the entire narrative, the scenery is mostly three rooms, two city streets and one dungeon, through which the main characters wind circles. Computer graphics lagged behind the world by fifteen years, and the soundtrack is composed of the most stamped songs that the authors probably found in some free online store of music for movies. Scriptual cinema screws up with such constancy that it is time to open an error counter, the value of which would exceed far over a hundred. In addition, the authors crammed so many characters into the narrative, so many storylines that the head goes around, and often the movie, in order to have time to tell about all the characters, simply cuts off one scene in the middle and transfers it to a completely different one, in no way related to what happened before. To say that it is confusing is to say nothing. Add to this the isolation of the story from ordinary viewers - and we get a hundred-minute story "about nothing", which began with no one knows what, and ended incomprehensible what, and leaving behind a feeling of deep irritation due to wasted time. The only thing I would note is that actors who coped well with the roles, who, despite all the ineptitude of the script and disgustingly written characters, still honestly worked out their modest fees. But that’s all, there’s nothing more good in the film.
For many people involved in the film, Chronicles of Darkness was the first and only project in his creative career. And looking at the final result of their work, I sincerely want it to remain so. The cinema is full of talentless “creators” every year storming store shelves with new portions of stamped delirium. And a good fantasy now comes out enough to satisfy the appetites of moviegoers.
2 out of 10