yes, it’s a silly mistake, but is still very common, and it might possibly solve your problem. make sure you have applied the filter to the clip that is already IN THE TIMELINE and are working on that timeline clip in the viewer. That’s all i can think of.
If it begins working, and your video is consistently dark it may be helpful to either “copy” the attributes on one clip in the timeline and “paste attributes” > “filters” to other similarly dark clips.
You could also “nest” clips that touch each other in the timeline to make them their own sequence. (Select clips then – Sequence>Nest Items) and then apply a single filter to correct the entire sequence as a whole. You would add the filter to the sequence, then Option – double click the sequence to open it in the viewer as a single clip, then adjust the filter as you would any other clip.
Hope it works. Good luck