I don’t expect much from new releases coming out this early in the year, but every so often, something comes along that, if nothing else, looks different. Such is the case with Out of Darkness, a horror movie following a group of Stone Age humans in a desolate landscape. Again, if nothing else, it would be different. Quite frankly, the trailer looked pretty promising, and it did get me to thinking why someone hadn’t made a movie yet about prehistoric humans facing off against, like, the first vampires or something.
OK, Out of Darkness isn’t quite that, but it could still be something cool.
45,000 years ago, a family of six hunter-gatherers landed on a desolate landscape in search of food and shelter. Led by Adem (Chuku Modu), the group consists of him, his pregnant mate Ave (Iola Evans), younger brother Geirr (Kit Young), juvenile son Heron (Luna Mwezi), older advisor Odal (Arno Luening), and “stray” Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green). They lost their food in a storm crossing the sea, and the land where they arrived looks pretty desolate. Adem and Geirr are both hunters, and they don’t find much in the way of living prey, but animal remains they do find suggest there’s something out there that might not be too friendly.
Things take a turn when, in the middle of a dark night, something snatches Heron away. Panicked that he may have lost the one he cares about the most, Adem takes off looking in a dense forest he and Geirr had earlier decided to avoid on their way to a mountain range where there might be some caves. The family only has a handful of basic tools at their disposal, and whatever it is that’s out there, they can’t even seem to catch a glimpse of the thing. What is this thing and can this group handle it?
Out of Darkness opens promisingly enough, and there’s a lot of interesting atmosphere on display here. The creature the family is either hunting or being hunted by is at best an impression in a dark landscape, and director Andrew Cumming has more than a few tricks on hand to disorient the viewer. It’s not a perfect set-up or anything, but it largely works. And even with a made-up language, there are ways to give individual members of the family personalities that show how they confront the unknown. Adem is confident in his own abilities as a hunter and takes off in pursuit while Odal falls back on superstition. The major idea here is the group doesn’t know what’s out there, and as long as the audience doesn’t either, then the movie largely works.
However, like a lot of horror movies, once the creature finally appears on screen for the audience to see clearly, the movie loses quite a bit and becomes a fairly predictable exercise. To be fair, there are still some effective moments, but the movie became less of a horror movie and more something trying to say something about humanity itself. That part doesn’t work quite so well, but for the first two-thirds at least, Out of Darkness does far more right than wrong. It’s just the ending that didn’t work as much as I had hoped it would.
Grade: C+
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