THE DARK AND THE WICKED
This review is from Beyond Fest 2020. TW: suicide.
Bryan Bertino, I owe you an apology. I will admit I slept on THE STRANGERS. Really, the premise didn’t do much for me and I didn’t give it the chance that I gave to YOU’RE NEXT. In the ensuing years, I would keep hearing horror fans rave about it and curiously, I didn’t listen. Maybe I was being stubborn? Maybe I was trapped by demons? It could be a lot of things, but after watching THE DARK AND THE WICKED, I am convinced that Bryan Bertino is a writer/director that I should pay more attention to.
Louise (Marin Ireland) and Michael (Michael Abbott Jr.) return to the family farm to attend their dying father and support their mother through his last days. Their mother seems terrified and issues a warning. They don’t listen but come to realize that their mother was right. Something evil is at work but what is it? Can they save their family and themselves? What’s real and what isn’t? That’s the question.
The film gets right to the point and treated me to a personal terror that had me screaming in my car at the Mission Tiki Drive In within the first ten minutes. I am assured that I was not the only one doing this by others watching the audience. It also was not the only time that this happened during the running time of the film. The first scare is the classic Hitchcock set-up namely the ticking bomb under the table. Bertino pulled this off effortlessly and the effect on the viewer is as explosive as a bomb would be. You see what’s going to happen and then he lets you anticipate the horror until it bursts out of your mouth and the screen. From the standpoint of gore and violence, nothing here is really that different from many other films, the key is the direction, writing, and the emotional impact of the performances. I know a lot of people believe that only shocking moments can elicit this kind of terror. It’s the emotions that you feel from the characters/actors and the strength of the story which is the map for the film’s emotional truth. I’ve watched a lot of gore, as a gore hound and exploitation fan, and a ton of violence. If I don’t care about the characters, I feel nothing. I can be grossed out, for sure, but it’s a hollow experience. In THE DARK AND THE WICKED, I cared. THE DARK AND THE WICKED took a hammer and tongs to the audience’s soul. As the writer and director of the film, Bryan Bertino deserves a large portion of the credit for the film’s success.
There’s a feeling of dread that runs throughout the film and a hopelessness that sets in that’s the best of horror. Bertino pulls off the horror hat trick that many have tried and even some of the masters, like H.P. Lovecraft- it was basically one of his most used stylistic flourishes, have bungled at least once. The mysterious antagonist and having to eventually come up with the goods. It’s a hard thing to do and in THE DARK AND THE WICKED, Bertino has succeeded beyond anything that I was expecting. The performances are great, Marin Ireland is actually from Camarillo, California and is a New York stage actress, but I totally believed her as the scion of a farm family from the Midwest. Michael Abbott Jr. made me feel for him so much that I was legitimately upset about a number of things that happened to his character. But he wasn’t the only actor that I screamed NOOOO! at the screen for. Julie Oliver-Touchstone (Mother), Michael Zagst (Father) Lynn Andrews (Nurse), Xander Berkley (Priest), and Ella Ballentine (Young Girl) all have an impact with their somewhat brief roles. Becky (Mindy Raymond) really does. The film is economical in that way. There’s no filler in the script or unnecessary flourishes in the direction of the action. The film breathes and lives at its own pace. As with one of my favorite films, IT FOLLOWS, the evil force has constructed a fearsome trap, baited with love and, in the case of THE DARK AND THE WICKED, family ties. The plight of Louise and Michael is inescapable. How can you explain the unexplainable? Who will believe you when you have difficulty believing it yourself?
The cinematography is by Tristan Nyby, grandson of the writer Christian Nyby who directed THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD. It’s a mix of daylight scenes, that have the look of a blasted heath, and some really intense low light scenes. The scenes are rich, instead of just dark and, really, they don’t call it THE DARK AND THE WICKED for nothing. The darkness of many of the scenes is used well because you do wonder if there is something out there. In the dark. The dark is its own force and antagonist in the film.
THE DARK AND THE WICKED is a shrieking tempest rendered in quiet rooms, an evil, that once awakened, that cannot be turned from its purpose. An enemy that uses your own weaknesses against yourself. A cold hand leading you to the grave.
THE DARK AND THE WICKED is available on VOD and is now on Shudder for your streaming pleasure.
https://youtu.be/0nXbpkCcMao