One of my favorite fantasy series as a kid was Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising quintology. I re-read the series a few years ago just to check, and indeed it wasn't just the youthful me that enjoyed the books. I think the books may have been my first exposure to a re-imagining of the Arthurian mythos. In any case, they rock.
The Seeker - The Dark is Rising does not rock.
The film isn't bad, as such. It's just pretty blah. Visually it's fine, even well-made. And the acting is pretty strong (though, Christopher Eccleston really doesn't seem to be into his role as the Dark Rider. But he's appropriately creepy as the the cheerful Rider-in-disguise-as-a-friendly-doctor). And I don't mind, as I gather some fans do, that Will Stanton has become an American.
But the story has been stripped of any subtlety, or oddly enough any Arthurian references. And it's not Susan Cooper's fault, writing in 1965, that the "the power of the [y] was split into [x] pieces and hidden" would become a video game cliche, but it has and you think the filmmakers might have de-emphasized that part of the plot. So the whole movie just flies by in a "only you can do it, oh look you did" blur.
FuzzyCo grade: C
