Mark Reviews Movies: THE DARK AND THE WICKED

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 5, 2020

There's no denying that writer/director Bryan Bertino creates a chilled and sometimes chilling, creepy and sometimes startling atmosphere in The Dark and the Wicked. The movie, about a family that succumbs to dark forces of the mind or the otherworldly, offers a mood of near-complete dread from its opening scene, which generates a lot of eeriness for a tiny payoff, to its final ones, when everything goes to hell. It actually might be too much dread of a very specific variety for what Bertino seems to be attempting here.

That might sound like an odd argument, especially when discussing a horror movie. Shouldn't the point be to envelop us in fear and despair? Shouldn't such a movie set out to scare us as soon and as often as possible? Shouldn't we commend a movie for possessing such a study focus on atmosphere? In theory, the answer to all of those is yes, but in this case, Bertino might have allowed his devotion to a constantly eerie mood get in the way of allowing us to really feel it, to figure out what's actually going on as the story progresses, and to find some human quality beneath the mounting tension and supernatural frights.

The story begins with an older woman (played by Julie Oliver-Touchstone), who lives on a goat ranch in the middle of some rural nowhere and tends to her ill, bed-ridden husband (played by Michael Zagst). After tending to the sick man, the woman proceeds to chop vegetables for dinner, but something disturbs the goats outside. Some strange noises, like footsteps and wood being dragged on wood, sound behind her. When she turns around, anticipating the worst, the woman discovers a chair, moved by an unseen and unknown presence, behind her.

Right away, Bertino establishes that something on this farm is amiss, beyond the sick man and the woman's odd late-night cooking habits. Someone or something else is there with them. It would be a solid, creepy teaser for what's to come, but Bertino doesn't tease for too long, even though he seems to think he does for quite a while.

The next day, there's an impromptu family reunion. Louise (Marin Ireland), the older couple's daughter, returns to the family farm to help her parents. Her brother Michael (Michael Abbott Jr.) already has arrived, lending a hand to farm manager Charlie (Tom Nowicki). Mother disapproves of the unexpected visit. She told both of her children not to come.

There isn't much in the way of character development, which is fine enough for the filmmaker's intentions here. We learn that Louise, currently single and unemployed, and Michael, who has a wife and two daughters, have been somewhat estranged from each other and the family, each of them going on with their lives.

The reunion seems to offer an opportunity for reconciliation, but then, their mother mutilates her fingers with a chopping knife. In the morning, they find her, hanging from a rafter in the barn with no sign of how she possibly could have physically accomplished that. Something, indeed, is amiss here, and whoever and whatever is lingering around the farm wants Louise and Michael's dad—specifically, the mother fear, his soul. A local priest (played by Xander Berkeley) is convinced of that, too, even though Louise and Michael think he might be feeding them and have fed their atheist mother the hint that made her lose her senses.

Bertino does a lot well here. Beyond the overall ambiance, there are some unsettling and frightening images and sequences within the movie. That moment with the mother and the knife, for example, is initially shocking and only becomes more disturbing. Of particular note is how Bertino uses shadows and silhouetted figures, just visible in the backdrop (As the camera follows Louise in one shot, we just catch a glimpse of a figure, backlit by light in a doorway, standing out of her line of sight) or gradually coming into view (When someone goes to investigate the scene of the mother's apparent suicide, a shadow rises on the wall, clearly not originating from the person in the frame). The sound design here is also quite effective, suggesting people or things just out of frame or invisible.

The movie barely relents on its claustrophobic tone, scares, and shocks. In that unyielding approach—along with the fact that Bertino's screenplay doesn't leave much room to question what's really happening here (It's pretty apparent that an evil presence exists and is working against these characters, despite a couple of fake-outs involving dreams or possible visions)—lies the movie's core issue. Without any sense of ebb and flow to the proceedings (not to mention that the logic of whatever is working against these characters feels as if it's improvised for each moment and the sake of convenience), it starts to become too repetitive.

On a more fundamental level, Bertino's underlying story—about grief, fears about death and dying, and the tenuous bonds of this family—becomes lost among the tension and scares. Make no mistake, The Dark and the Wicked is filled with steady terror and consistent despair (It metaphorically kills love and hope at one point). As admirable as that approach and Bertino's tactics may be, the movie ultimately feels like a bit too shallow—an exercise in atmosphere for its own sake.

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