Out of Darkness

This movie depends on almost endless scenes of its six stone age characters running through scrubby open terrain and dark forests, with whip pans and intercut close-ups of terrified faces, to create a sense of danger and unseen horror. Trouble is, this obvious packing of the narrative with ginned-up suspense achieves nothing in terms of drama or horror. Added to that are a lot of unanswered questions about character motivation and the plausibility of the so-called demons tracking our hapless sextet. The inevitable "reveal" is both laughable and inexplicable. I truly appreciate the attempt by the filmmakers to create a low-budget feature out of spare elements and a minimalist sensibility, but at times I felt insulted that this movie expected to get away with what was clearly a woefully under-imagined scenario.

I watched Out of Darkness "early" as part of AMC's Screen Unseen. I put early in quotes because apparently this is a 2022 movie that took two years to reach theaters. I can see why. It doesn't belong in theaters. It belongs in the endless abyss of underwhelming and unmemorable streaming movies.

This movie has very little substance. Not much happens. I can summarize the entire thing in a few short sentences. The story is not engaging. You barely learn anything about the characters. So you don't care about them or understand their decisions.

They spend the entire movie teasing you until a fully underwhelming and generic "payoff." It made me roll my eyes. And it has a message we've seen a million times before, but executed in a clunky fashion.

(1 viewing, early screening Screen Unseen 1/29/2024)

My wife and I attended a screening of the UK film 🇬🇧 Out of Darkness (2022) in theaters last night. The storyline follows a group of individuals working together during prehistoric times, seeking a new home and means of survival. Arriving in a new land with limited resources, they hunt for survival only to discover they are not the sole hunters.

Directed by Andrew Cumming in his major motion picture debut, the film stars Chuku Modu (Captain Marvel), Safia Oakley-Green (She Said), Kit Young (Shadow and Bone), Arno Lüning (Bad Girls), and Luna Mwezi (Needle Park Baby).

A well-crafted picture with a premise reminiscent of 13th Warrior, the cinematography, attire, and props authentically transport you to the era, conveying the desperation for survival and lack of hope. The characters' unity in the face of madness is palpable. While the big reveal didn't resonate with me as expected, it's a smart twist depicting evolution. The film captures a time that could well be a forgotten true story. Solid horror elements, noteworthy kills, and impressive gore contribute to the experience.

In conclusion, Out of Darkness possesses worthwhile elements but falls slightly short of its potential. I would give it a 5.5-6/10 and recommend watching it at least once.

They advertised it as a (pre-historic) horror, but I would call it a thriller. It's rather slow-paced and the creepiness is mainly atmospheric: long scenes on barren hills and valleys and in dense woods, often in pitch-black nights. In between there are a few exciting outbursts of frenetic action in confrontations with what seem to be monsters; the relentless violence is impressively realistic. The cinematography is beautiful, but with so many dark scenes and with people who are difficult to tell apart since they're packed in thick layers of fur and have smeared faces, it's at many times hard to follow exactly what is happening.

The actors are made to speak the whole movie through some ancient (made up?) foreign language. I suppose this was meant to enhance the feeling of authenticity, but it's a bit tiresome to have to read subtitles for 85 minutes, distracting me from following the images. I also kept imagining what a strain it must have been to learn all these incomprehensible words and sentences. Personally, I wouldn't have minded it when they had chosen for English dialogues. And by the way, how did leader Adem get such a perfectly shaven head, did they have back then some kind of trimmers?

There's a nice twist in the end, with even an existential message: however different people may outwardly look and act, inside they are basically the same human beings. So in spite of the rather cynical and violent conclusion, the movie ended with at least a hopeful touch.

One sentence summary: After embarking on a long voyage, a tribe of ancient humans must navigate a foreign land to find shelter while being hunted by unknown adversaries at night.

The idea for which this film's plot was formulated had some interesting potential. The setting was expansive, the practical effects were outstanding, and the acting was mostly admirable, but the progression of the story led to an ending that left a sour taste in my mouth, to say the least. The core conflict of morality versus survival is certainly a well explored topic, however when portrayed correctly, it still packs a punch. With another rewrite and some fine-tuning of the script, Out of Darkness could've achieved something great. But as it stands, I'll mostly likely look back on this film as something of a missed opportunity.