BRAVE THE DARK - Mark Reviews Movies

Brave the Dark, Angel Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 23, 2025

Based on a true story, Brave the Dark tells the tale of a teenage boy, stuck in place because of unaddressed psychological trauma, and his teacher, still grieving the death of his beloved mother. The real story is probably one of considerable humanity and inspiration. Co-writer/director Damian Harris' dramatization, though, is awkwardly written and emotionally manipulative.

The teen is Nathan (Nicholas Hamilton), who has spent most of his life in an orphanage, in a series of foster homes, or, as he is now, without a house, living out of his car in the remote fields outside his small town. Nobody notices or, if anyone does, says anything about the teenager's situation, because Nathan is good at hiding a lot. That's not just that he joined the track team to have an excuse to use the school's showers in the morning or that he goes days without eating, either.

By being a good and empathetic teacher, though, Stan Deen (Jared Harris, who is also the director's brother), who teaches art and runs the high school's drama club, does notice. Seeing Nathan arrive early for his class and have no luck trying to force something out of a vending machine, Stan gives his student an oversized candy bar from his briefcase. It's a simple act of kindness that, according to some testimony from the real person who inspired this story during the end credits, means the world to the boy. If that's the case, the movie just kind of passes it by, before Nathan's problems become more dramatic and Stan's kindness becomes the stuff of a broadly inspirational movie.

Nathan helps some friends rob a store one night, and the cops show up, arrest him and lead him out of the building in front of the entire school (Even the staging of this scene is forced, since class is in session when the police arrive), and are ready to throw the book at him when Nathan refuses to name the names of his accomplices. Using all of the relevant contacts he has made over his decades as an adored and admired teacher, Stan eventually arranges, not only for Nathan to receive a sentence of a few days in prison and probation, but also to become the teen's legal guardian, because Nathan's grandparents seem eager to be rid of him.

Did the real story unfold in this exact way? There's little reason to doubt the authenticity of the screenplay, additionally written by Lynn Robertson Hay, Dale G. Bradley, John P. Spencer, and the movie's real-life subject, whose name might be a bit of a spoiler. However, it's so focused on events, conflict, and the central mystery of what happened to Nathan as a child as to make that story feel a bit phony.

That mostly comes down to the dialogue, which has characters bluntly saying what they're thinking and feeling—and, by extension, how we should think and feel—at almost every moment, and the performances. Harris is an actor capable of considerable restraint, but his Stan is so gee-golly nice, accommodating, and trusting that Harris' work almost comes across as a caricature. As for Hamilton, his Nathan has the air of brooding and just-beneath-the-surface anger, but the underlying trauma, guilt, and misplaced rage of the character never really emerge in his performance.

Instead, the movie tells us that he's in pain and shows us, as well, by way of flashbacks that turn out to be misdirection for the most part. In theory, that's because Nathan has repressed the truth of how he ended up alone, except the filmmaking itself seems to contradict that notion as Nathan's memories of and research into what happened to his family tell us one thing, only for Stan to somehow figure out the truth, which the teen already knows, from the same research. Maybe the back story and its discovery aren't as hole-filled as that, but the point of the movie trying to send us in the wrong direction for there to be a shocking revelation in the third act remains. It's clunky and disingenuous storytelling either way.

The same goes for the portrayal of the central relationship. It looks with rose-tinted glasses at the bond between a troubled, distrusting teen, who generally seems fine with a relative stranger taking him in, and a beyond-kindly man, who reaches an odd breaking point that coincidentally lines up with the traditional point in a screenplay when conflict should erupt. It's the little things that feel off about Brave the Dark, but they add up to make this theoretically encouraging story a strange misfire.

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