Out of Darkness (1994)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Absolutely Brilliant!

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I stumbled across this on the Lifetime Movie Network, and was blown away to finally see an unglamorous, starkly accurate portrayal of someone with schizophrenia. Kudos to Diana Ross, that can't possibly be an easy performance!!! Being bi-polar, I've been in and out of mental wards as a patient, seeing other patients with schizophrenia. This is the first time I've ever seen a movie or television show that captures the frightening reality without making it seem like a mere eccentricity. Now, if someone would just make a decent movie about being bi-polar, so I could point to it to help people understand what I go through.

I can't understand why this film hasn't been shown on British TV before now. As an expose of severe mental illness, it was excellent. I didn't recognise Diana Ross at first and must commend her for her performance. Showing the absolutely harrowing and humiliating face of schizophrenia is no easy task but she pulled it off. The relationship that she had with her mother, sister and daughter were believable. The mother wanted her daughter to remain her 'child' and thus be in control of her; her sister was resentful that she had 'lost' her sister, while at the same time being envious that her mother had more time for her daughter's sickness than her other child; and her daughter was just plain frightened of the uncertainty that mental illness brings with it. Once again Maura Tierney brings to her performance intelligence and insight. All in all an excellent film.

I didn't realize I was watching Diana Ross when I saw this. She is very good.The movie does an extraordinary job of conveying what psychosis is like. Been there, done that. What's even better is that it shows, in realistic ways, what it is like to cope with psychosis.Too many films romanticize psychosis - madness is enticing if horrifying, a voyeuristic thrill for the presumably sane. In this film, it is humanized. Paulie struggles to "ride it out", to have a plan to cope, to cope, and to go beyond coping to living a full life, while managing her own condition. Tremendously empowering.This film lacks syrup, and while it is dramatic it is not generally melodramatic. Paulie's work to trust others so that she can heal, to rebuild relationships with her family as she does, to face the real, irreparable changes that 18 years of poorly controlled schizophrenia have had on her child, her family & herself is so well portrayed that it merits a run-on sentence.9 stars.

Diana Ross gives an incredible and very realistic portrait of a woman who lives with mental illness and apparently seems to defeat it. I found the movie well acted--by all its cast members---both informative and entertainingly educational in a good sense---that the educational aspects are subtle and not like a documentary. This is a dramatic and excellent movie that shows Diana Ross as a talented convincing actress. It shows that not everyone is accepting of mental illness--she gets dumped by a boyfriend who cannot handle the fact that she has survived mental illness. Highly recommended for the entire family and for those who have family members who are afflicted with mental illness, not to mention the many fans of Diana Ross, the actress in this case.