DARK WINDOWS - Mark Reviews Movies

Dark Windows, Brainstorm Media

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 17, 2023

Some basic level of sympathy is probably required for the protagonists of a movie like Dark Windows. It's an overly familiar story about a group of friends being terrorized by an intruder at a remote location. Beyond the fact that screenwriter Wolf Kraft and director Alex Herron's movie offers nothing new or subversive to this formula, it arguably doesn't even fulfill the expectations we would have about it.

It's a drag, in other words, for a long stretch of time, as the filmmakers obfuscate a central mystery that isn't much of one and repeatedly tease the possibility that someone is about to do our main characters some kind of harm. We don't learn much of these characters, either, making the exercise a futile one in terms of suspense, and what we do learn of them doesn't particularly make us care about the fate that might eventually befall them.

The story begins at a memorial for a young woman who recently died in a car crash. We follow Tilly (Anna Bullard), the dead woman's best friend since childhood, who was one of four people in that car and who is convinced that everyone blames her for the incident. In theory, Tilly is intended to be our point of sympathy for this, but the filmmakers assume that her deep feelings of guilt are enough characterization for her, apparently.

Well, there's also the point that she's not nearly as bad as the other friends who were in the car. They're Monica (Annie Hamilton) and Peter (Rory Alexander). She's annoyed that Tilly feels remorseful and sad about the fact that her best friend is dead, so to try to have some fun after about a week of putting up with Tilly's emotions, Monica suggests that the trio take a little getaway to her family's farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

Meanwhile, Peter, whose drinking might be becoming a problem in Tilly's opinion (One should argue that it is has very much and very tangibly become a problem after what happened), tries to lighten the mood with a lot of inappropriate jokes, mostly about wanting to have sex with his pals. These two are obnoxious in different ways but with equal effect.

The rest of the story, of course, is set at the farmhouse, where nobody notices a shadowy figure hanging out behind them or walking right up to Peter as he sits in a car, thinks it strange that all of the windows are opened in the middle of the night, or wonders who set up and keeps changing the photo in a makeshift memorial for the dead friend. The three mostly wander around the house or in the forest surrounding the place, unaware that someone is watching them. The stalker mainly seems to be waiting for enough time to pass to justify this exercise's existence as a feature-length movie.

Something is decidedly off about the pacing and rhythm of this affair, which constantly communicates that there's someone lurking around or nearby the house but refuses to pay off any of the implication until the third act. The mysterious stalker's game feels more performative for the audience's benefit than anything else, because, apart from the actions that none of the characters notice or give a second thought to, it's not as if the intruder's presence has much of any impact on the story or the characters' state of mind. The figure mainly hides and emerges and moves so that we can see the stalker, while Herron adds a threatening sting to the soundtrack and Kraft tosses around some red herrings among a limited cast of characters.

The core of the narrative turns out to be a series of incomplete flashbacks, gradually revealing what happened and who did what on the night of the crash and the friend's death. To give away the particulars would be useless, because they're both obvious and saved until the last possible moment of the story. The only thing it confirms for us is the thought that none of these characters is worth the patience required to watch them not be terrified by the stalker, wallow in completely reasonable or evade what should be totally justified guilt, and talk around the story's inciting incident in ways that become less and less believable.

Once the slightly intriguing setup of Dark Windows is established, the whole thing becomes tedious, in other words. That feeling is only made worse by the movie's either misplaced or intentionally deceitful perspective of sympathy.

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