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Fifty Shades Darker Movie Review

Fifty Shades Darker is a 2017 erotic romantic drama film directed by James Foley and starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan. It’s a very bad sequel.

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“I hope you’re not a sore loser.

That depends on how hard you spank me“

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While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Anastasia must confront the anger and envy of the women who came before her. While I genuinely did not find the first movie to be particularly bad, this sequel most definitely is. The books’ author clearly did not have enough ideas for the entire trilogy, so she just threw some unconnected stuff into the mixture, hoping that some sort of storyline will form.

It never did. The screenwriter for this movie did not help matters either and I would also blame James Foley for terrible direction or lack thereof. The first film was infinitely better directed and written. Plot points just come and go here with no proper explanation, build-up or conclusion. The movie needed a connective thread between these plot points desperately.

I still find Jamie Dornan not very good in the role of Christian. It may not even be his fault as the role is thinly written and the backstories that he got here were all terrible. The franchise continues this unfortunate trend of explaining fetishes through these dark pasts, which simply isn’t how any of this works at all.

Dakota Johnson is still very good as Anastasia, though the character is here dumber than she was before. But Johnson is very charismatic and believable, elevating her bad role at least to a certain degree. Eric Johnson as this creepy boss of hers was unnecessary and forgettable while Kim Basinger as the former lover of Christian was over-the-top and too much of a fabricated villain for Ana.

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As for the sex scenes, Fifty Shades Darker might be better in that area than its predecessor as it is much more playful this time around. Their outdoors experimenting was particularly entertaining to watch. The movie is sexy and well shot as always, but the pacing was horrible, the structure was terrible and the storyline was atrocious.

Fifty Shades Darker is a bad sequel that looks good and is undeniably entertaining to watch, but the characters continue to be thinly written and this time around the storyline is much worse, if this script could even be called a story as the movie is disconnected in its many abandoned and silly subplots and side characters. It’s also badly directed and weakly acted by everybody except Dakota Johnson who was quite good in spite of her poorly written character.

My Rating – 2