Popular reviews

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★★ 2

  The movie that always gets forgotten when people put together lists of the best superhero movies of all time -- probably because the character is invented for the screen, rather than adapted to it. And, maybe because its "hero" is a self-described "monster" with a gruesome face. But this really is Raimi's first stab at the genre, and a very successful one.

  Plus, it's eerily like a TAKEN movie when you watch it now: Liam Neeson's life gets wrecked and he swears revenge using (in this case literally) superhuman fighting skills.

  It also includes the phrases "The Rangeveritz Technique" and "The Bellasarious Memorandum." I love DARKMAN.

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  Review by sydney ★★★★★ 4

  i'm not sure why the world decided that mad science, goofy effects, heavy-handed metaphors, overacting, cartoonishly noir lighting, bouncing overbearing scores, weird special effects, and totally unrealistic everything weren't good enough for superhero movies anymore but we really fucked up bad. this is so much better than every other "but who's the REAL monster?" comic book movie that came after it, and it wasn't even based on a comic book. it's also Raimi's best movie and one of Neeson's best performances - the way he moves his body around is an incredible Universal Monster homage that probably nobody expected he could do. THE INVISIBLE MAN meets Adam West's Batman, what a feat to pull that off.

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  Review by Kat ★★★★ 12

  Emo batman wishes he was as tortured as darkman...

  90s action was just better.

  -Bruce Campbell cameo ❤
  -Helicopter chase
  -Gratuitous explosions
  -Casual nunchuk usage
  -Evil henchmen and Liam having an identity crisis
  -This mofo is 3D printing in 1990

  What's not to love!

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  Review by Silent J ★★★★ 1

  Wanna know what the best Liam Neeson moment ever is?
  Four words...

  "Take the fucking elephant."

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  Review by Ian West ★★★★★ 11

  Pulsates with its influences and its originality, Raimi’s Darkman is a sadistic cartoon tragedy—a Grand Guinol top of his game Raimi genre menagerie that’s just about the perfect kind of pulpy universal horror mad scientist superhero funhouse movie for idiots like me.

  Phantom of the Opera for morons.

  The Invisible Man for hobos.

  Elephant Man for the three stooges.

  Almost forgot how much I love this movie.

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  Review by Willow Maclay ★★★★ 2

  Raimi fundamentally understands the art of comic books and shoots his film in the same way a comics artist would panel their work. This is the biggest difference in what Raimi does, and the crop of Marvel/DC movies that have come out in the last few years. He isn't shooting a brand or a revisionist take on comics. He is diving right into what makes them work. Visually the frames from an alleyway in a kind of storyboarder's view, the intense close up, the sparse dialogue that appears while always keeping a characters face in frame is all in the dna of comic books. It's as if he crafted this movie in the same way he would as if he…

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 4

  Pulpy comic book mad science/noir super-heroics meets genuinely tragic Universal Monster horror; everything in here from Phantom of the Opera to The Invisible Man to Frankenstein to The Wolf Man. Raimi has such a genius eye for fluid, animated visuals (crazy how much of this would serve as a test-run for the Spider-man movies, especially 2) that even when the illusion is occasionally broken with a silly VFX shot it's hard to find it anything less than dizzying and endearing. Elfman's bombast is definitely a holdover from the Burton Batman but its melodramatic effect is a bit different when you start throwing in those uniquely gruesome designs and textures from Raimi's splatter days. The kind of movie where Liam Neeson will completely sincerely say "What is it about the dark? What secrets does it hold?" and then proceed to viciously murder dozens of gangsters for disfiguring him. A good one, I mean.

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  Review by Jamelle Bouie ★★★½

  What a delightful, strange little movie. A cross between a Universal monster flick and a superhero film—Batman if he were more Man Bat than Bat Man—it hits familiar story beats while distinguishing itself with fun (and offen gross) practical effects and the strong visual style of Sam Raimi. A young Liam Neeson does dark and brooding well, and while Francis McDormand doesn’t have much to do, she gives the material her all. (She also, uh, looks great.)

  A little weird and a little scary, Darkman is—like Burton’s Batman films—a vision of what the superhero genre could be like when creators embrace, and try to render in full, the essential strangeness of the ideas and tropes in question.

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  Review by anna nomaly ★★★★★ 2

  Raimi in pure De Palma mode, throwing every cinematic trick he’s got onto the screen and relishing in the unbridled melodrama at the heart of this pulpy, high camp, horror-tinged superhero origin story, still one of the best and most creative of its kind. A marvel.

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  Review by Travis Lytle ★★★★½ 10

  Located fittingly between "The Evil Dead" films and the "Spider-man" series in Sam Raimi's canon, his marvelously entertaining "Darkman" is a horror-superhero mash-up that only Raimi could create. Full of character, thrills, and touches of gore, "Darkman" is a stylized action film that feels ripped from the pages of a comic book. It is compelling and delightfully overwrought, and it teems with engaging personality.

  The story follows Liam Neeson's Dr. Peyton Westlake, a scientist developing artificial flesh who is assumed to be killed when his lab is ransacked members of a criminal syndicate. Stalking the shadows, Westlake becomes Darkman and, as Darkman, haunts and hunts down those who destroyed his life.

  The narrative weaves together elements of crime films, revenge…

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  Review by c h r i s 🕯️🍂 ★★★★ 2

  Take the fucking elephant.

  Another film that files under how haven’t I seen this before! oh the tragedy. Have you ever read some reviews on this site and immediately added the movie to your watchlist only to watch it shortly after? I did this today and ultimately said fuck it, lets watch it now this sounds friggin awesome and you know what? It wassssss. 

  Liam Neeson is our Darkman the scientist that managed to successfully create a synthetic skin for burned victims, after some gangsters leave him disfigured and his lab assistant dead. Darkman seeks out his revenge on those who wronged him! 
  Basically the anti-hero revenge flick I never knew I needed and the perfect homage to The Invisible Man &…

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  Review by Evan T ★★★★ 2

  There are two directors who shoot frenetic action as if literally anything is possible to get onto the screen, one of them is George Miller, and the other, of course, is Sam Raimi. Darkman is almost like if Tim Burton’s Batman was instilled with Evil Dead technique, throwing in a rotting handful of Universal horror nods for good measure. I love that Raimi went full-force on creating his own character when he couldn’t secure any rights to the comic-book creations he had interests in, this man just knows what he wants and gets it. Complimenting Raimi’s touch, Danny Elfman’s score is typically bouncy, Frances McDormand is a radiant delight, and Liam Neeson brings all the mutated tragedy of films like The…