‘She didn’t believe in God…’
Fear is visceral. It’s primal. It’s something that starts in the pit of the stomach and grows into a yelling alarm that rattles around your brain. This means that petty concerns such as a script or even a plot don’t always matter in a horror film. A good director can elicit that feeling of a rising dread without any words at all and while this concept is perhaps pushed a little too far in Bryan Bertino’s latest feature film The Dark and the Wicked, when it hits, it really hits hard…
Louise (Marin Ireland) and Michael (Michael Abbott Jr.) Straker are estranged siblings who are reunited after their father David (Michael Zagst) is taken ill. Beginning with strange behaviour from their mother Virginia (Julie Oliver-Touchstone), it soon becomes clear that all is not well on the family farm.
The Dark and the Wicked is the perfect example of the less-is-more philosophy that serves the horror genre so well. What little dialogue there is often finds itself drowned out by the sound of belligerent sheep or an ominous gust of wind. The plot really is paper thin, but the inventive visuals and heart-stopping jumpscares are enough to ensure that The Dark and the Wicked is never too avant garde or difficult. The concept of a struggle for the soul of a loved one is an intriguing prospect and Bertino leans into that notion with a series of degradations and jet black tableaus that are as fiendishly cruel and nasty as anything dreamt up by Wes Craven or John Carpenter. The clues in the title of course but this genuinely is a dark and a wicked film. These characters suffer. The light at the end of the tunnel remains frustratingly elusive. But to once again evoke the Dread Pirate Roberts to Princess Buttercup: ‘Life is pain your highness. Anyone who says different is selling something…’.