Contrary to the title, “Fifty Shades Darker” is a lot less dark and messed up than the first of the book-based trilogy, “Fifty Shades of Grey.” While there were a few scenes that keep you on the edge of your seat, most of the film was simply a romance film with a seemingly normal relationship between two adults.
This time around the Grey train, the audience gets to see a much happier and smiling Christian Grey via Irish actor, Jamie Dornan. The audience can see throughout the time since Anastasia Steele, played by Dakota Johnson, left him at the end of the first movie, he has really been working to become more “vanilla” (Christian’s term form the non-BDSM-ers) for Ana.
“Fifty Shades Darker” also gives us a better look into Christian’s past life. Throughout the movie, we see small flashbacks of Christian’s childhood with his birth mother, Ella. Most of these flashbacks we are able to see are through nightmares he has at night. A lot of the flashbacks you see are things we already knew from Christian’s past, but never actually visualized firsthand.
Most of familiar faces have returned for the second movie in the Fifty Shades film series. All of Christian’s family has returned as well as Ana’s friends, Kate and Jose. A new character with a minor role but a major impact to the storyline is Leila, Christian’s last submissive before Ana stumbled into his life.
After Ana meets Leila and sees a picture of Christian’s mom in his room, she begins to notice and an uncanny resemblance between herself and the two other major women in his life.
We are also introduced to a character that had a big part in making Christian who he is today, Mrs. Robinson. In the first movie we got to hear so much about her from Christian, but in “Fifty Shades Darker” Ana and the audience are able to come face-to-face with Christian’s longtime friend and business partner.
The second movie in the Fifty Shades film series is all about Christian’s past, his past relationships and his and Ana’s relationship moving forward. He is finally starting to let his boundaries go and let Ana in more. While there was a fair amount of drama between the two, there were a lot less ups and downs between them compared to the first movie.
For those of you who read the book before the movie, the film also followed the book pretty closely, staying true to the plot. However, the movie left out and changed some small parts from the book, most notable leaving out the minor character of Kate’s brother, Ethan.
Overall, director Sam Taylor-Johnson did a great job of casting, matching the actors with characters and maintaining who they are from the book. Similar to the first movie, “Fifty Shades Darker” ended with an intense cliffhanger. Luckily, “Fifty Shades Freed” is set to release Valentine’s Day 2018 so fans will not have to wait another two years to find out what happens next in the long, tumultuous story of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele’s relationship.
4/5 stars
