This should have been Jaws meets Alien meets Out Of Africa. But instead ends up being a far more tepid version of all three.
Comment
01/01/00
The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)
52
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:44
Fresh:23
Rotten:21
Average Rating:5.5/10
Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Synopsis: Based on a true story, THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS takes place in Africa during the late 1890s and concerns two ferocious lions who killed 130 railroad construction workers in only two months. A... [More]
Starring: Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas, John Kani, Om Puri
Director: Stephen Hopkins
Reviews for The Ghost and the Darkness
Top CriticClick to read the article
02/09/06
Top Criticatmospheric but uneven thriller
11/08/04
Rousing entertainment.
01/01/00
The camerawork is frenetic and confusing, and the big confrontations are as likely to provoke unintentional laughter as edge-of-the-seat excitement.
01/01/00
The Ghost and the Darkness isn't bad as a matinee distraction, but goodness knows it isn't good, either.
01/01/00
Provides us with an unforgettable primal encounter with the mysterious other.
08/28/02
Effectively wipes out the lion's cuddly image from The Lion King and reinstates its rep as the fearsome king of the jungle.
09/10/05
It lacks even the usual charm of being so bad it's funny. It's just bad.
01/01/00
Top CriticA compelling experience because it is true and because it is photographed with such panoramic intensity.
06/26/02
A great film!
01/01/00
Ranges in quality from adolescent boys' adventure stories to Heart of Darkness.
04/12/02
The picture is too lightweight, too posturing and too self-important to go in an introspective direction.
06/18/02
A rousingly effective 'man versus beast' yarn in the great tradition of Jaws and Moby Dick.
06/05/02
The Ghost And the Darkness keeps you waiting, and waiting, and waiting... and it just never revs up.
01/01/00
A taut thriller.
01/01/00
For all its noble intent, Hopkins' film falls flat halfway through, mired in bad philosophizing and too-beautiful killing fields, neither bark nor bite mean much here.
01/01/00
The main failure of the script is a complete lack of tension.
01/01/00
The real feature of this Stephen Hopkins-directed, William Goldman-scripted yarn are the gross and gory attacks, which explode at well-timed thrill intervals throughout.
01/01/00
When the movie sticks to fact, the result is a hypnotic spectacle.
05/12/01
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