The Seeker: The Dark is Rising
Rated PG for fantasy action and some scary images.
reviewed by Christopher Lyon
It’s a story as old as the juvenile fiction section at your local library. An ordinary boy turns out to be special, gifted, the long awaited one. At first resistant, he eventual embraces his destiny and makes his stand against the forces of darkness. No, it’s not Frodo, Harry, Neo, or those sibs from the Narnia books. It’s Will Stanton. And he probably won’t make the “chosen one” hall of fame.
The Story
At 14, Will is the youngest of the large Stanton brood made up of two parents, six brothers, and one sister. Awarded a job teaching physics at a college in England, the Stanton dad and his family set up shop in a quaint old countryside town just before Will’s 14th birthday. That’s when strange things start happening to Will. Animals don’t like him. He gets weird visions. And mall security turns into a bunch of crows demanding, “Give me the signs, Will.” He knew puberty would be tough, but nobody warned him about this.
Fortunately, four “old ones” from the town whisk Will away and explain that he is the long-awaited Seeker. He is the seventh son of a seventh son and destined to do battle for the light against darkness. Something about the darkness being held at bay for 1,000 years. But now the darkness is rising, coming into its greatest power, and only Will can stop it from covering the globe.
To stop that darkness (embodied as a person by a geeky professor/dark rider with a smugly menacing way), Will must use his newly discovered powers to jump back and forth in time and find the six signs (little bits of glowy metal that fit conveniently in his new belt). Along the way, he’ll get tripped up by his family, his awkwardness around girls, and the apocalypse. But he will most likely fight on.
The Verdict
“The Seeker” is based on one of a series of five books written by Susan Cooper in the 1970s, and it borrows liberally from the spiritually-minded youth hits of that era including “A Wrinkle in Time,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and others. That gives the whole thing an unoriginal-but-cozily-familiar feeling. Unfortunately, it’s missing much feeling of real danger, weight, or urgency.
Made by Walden Media, the group responsible for many recent kid-lit, family-friendly adventure films, “The Seeker” is directed by David Cunningham, an evangelical Christian and the son of the founder of Youth With a Mission (YWAM). Cunningham directed the brutal, excellent (and R-rated) WWII POW movie “To End All Wars.” Here, he lacks the actors and material to pull off such a satisfying story.
Compared to the rest of the packed genre of spiritual/supernatural tales featuring teenage boys, “Seeker” just feels a little lightweight. From the beginning, the outcome seems inevitable. Alexander Ludwig as Will just doesn’t quite convince; everyone else is decent-and-forgettable in underdeveloped parts. Even the darkness, played by Christopher Eccleston, seems more of an impolite, creepy friend of the family than the end of all things.
The other problem is that it’s never clear what’s at stake. The darkness is obviously some kind of world-ending apocalypse. But is it a spiritual evil or just some kind of natural force with a mild personality? Who are the “old ones”? Where did they come from? How are they able to jump back and forth in time? Can they jump into the future? Does “the light” have anything to do with God? With none of that information, Will’s task comes off more as a video game plot than epic adventure: Collect the five signs, discover the sixth, right-left-left-right on the controller, and vanquish the darkness.
Other than the darkish themes and some potentially scary supernatural battle sequences, the PG-rated “Seeker” contains no bad language, sexual content, and little genuine violence.
Worldview
I’d love to dive into “The Seeker’s” supernatural worldview. As mentioned above, though, it doesn’t seem to have one. Light and darkness seem to represent good and evil. And a few select humans seem to have supernatural powers to fight for light and/or darkness. And most of the symbols of light have a certain Celtic quality.
Any conclusions beyond that would involve making assumptions about what the story might be about on a spiritual level. Having not read Cooper’s books, I’d prefer not to guess.
Cunningham does champion one wise worldview in the middle of all this “ancient light v. darkness” talk. Will Stanton is forced accept the reality that if he chooses to do nothing for good, terrible consequences will follow. In other words, his choices matter, whatever they are. As the director told pluggedinonline.com, “I think that's a wonderful message -- that when you make a choice, whether it's right or wrong, the implications go far beyond you.”
Jesus taught that once we hear the truth of His teachings, we have a choice about whether we will practice them or not. Wise men make the choice to obey and follow Him. Their lives stand for eternity. Foolish people ignore His direction. Their lives get washed away by the storms of life. He puts it a lot better than I just did in Matthew 7:24-27. The point is that all of our choices have consequences.
Will Stanton learned that -- and not just from watching those Harry Potter movies. No sir. People were long-awaiting for him, too. Really. He’s in the club.
Questions:
- What’s your favorite movie about an ordinary person discovering he or she is a chosen one, long awaited, and gifted with special powers to save the world?
- Anyone else you might have liked to see cast as Will Stanton?
- Do you think it’s safe to assume that the light in the story is God and the darkness is Satan or evil? Or not so much?
- Do you think this genre is played out now -- or are you excited to see the next supernatural teen saving the world from evil?
- Start the pool: Will there be a sequel? Two? Four?