Nach der Finsternis

Not the greatest film I have ever seen but still I found it pretty decent and, in a way, similar to The Shout, which also starred John Hurt. The film moves along quite slowly, but when something happens it really happens. Obviously a low budget film but the acting is generally OK. I bought this DVD because Julian Sands is in it and I thought he pulled off a good performance, as did the legendary John Hurt. Although I thought this film was good I didn't really understand it. It can be quite confusing and I am yet to watch it again so once I watch it again and see if I understand it I'll update my comment here. Current opinion though, decent low budget horror film with a pair of good leading actors.

After the third attempt of suicide of Laurence (Julian Sands), his older brother Peter (John Hurt) decides to take him out of the mental institution and take care of him. Peter rents an old apartment in an empty building and leaves his wife and daughter to take care of his brother. Laurence is an insecure man that is haunted by the death of his twin brother Jan that drowned in soft sand on the beach. Peter controls and studies Laurence but when the filmmaker Pascale (Victoria Abril) meets Laurence, he seems to improve his mental condition affecting Peter.

"After Darkness" is a weird and gloomy film with a story of madness. The dark cinematography keeps an eerie atmosphere along the story. However the plot is confused with open end and the sentence "Do I stand before the king?" does not seem to have any special meaning. The performances of John Hurt and Julian Sands are the best to see in this low-budget film. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Depois da Escuridão" ("After Darkness")

...as long as you don't expect this to be the conventional Horror film it has been mismarketed as. Led by two late great British thespians, John Hurt & Julian Sands. "After Darkness" is a haunting & heartbreaking exploration of mental illness which in the hands of less committed or capable actors may have lacked the necessary emotional impact. It's hardly surprising that the film is a success given the strong leading performers, but it really is a surprise to see the name Dominique Othenin-Girard on the director's chair. The man responsible for the equally dire "Halloween 5" & "The Omen IV" really proved that he was more than capable of delivering on the promise he displayed here when undertaking directorial duties on the aformentioned films...

...If only he had applied the care & restraint he did on "After Darkness" to "Halloween 5" or "The Omen IV" they may well have ranked among the more interesting & effective of their respective franchises. Alas the films we got were completely over the top & rather insulting to the films which had come before them. Only the more dependable members of their respective casts kept them from being unwatchable. Funnily enough a couple of those cast members just so happened to be pre-teens. And perhaps that's the only comparison which can be drawn between those films & "After Darkness" as it features some fine work by child actors. Obviously not on the level of their veteran adult co-stars, but still it does perhaps prove that Dominique Othenin-Girard was quite good at bringing the best out of inexperienced child actors...

...The French film maker went on to make another above average film with the Supernatural Horror, "Night Angel", but if that one was what landed him the gig to direct "The Omen IV" then "After Darkness" was undoubtably the one which brought him to the attention of the producers of "Halloween 5". It's just a shame he failed to deliver on both counts!

S. S. S.