It’s always an interesting thing when a film is made a couple of years before it actually comes out in theaters, because if it were any good the filmmakers and producers would have fast-tracked it to come out as soon as it was ready. That’s the case with the latest horror film Out of Darkness. From the trailer, this looks like it could be a pretty scary movie. That can be a bit misleading though.

When this movie starts 45,000 years ago, in the Stone Age, we find a group of people walking along a barren wasteland of terrain. It seems that Adem (Chuko Modu)  is the leader and he has a woman who is pregnant with his child Ave (Iola Evans). Alongside them is Heron (Luna Mwezi), a young girl, Geirr (Kit Young), a younger man who’s ready to prove himself, Beyah (Safia Oakley Green) another young woman who likes Geirr but has ideas of her own about what they should be doing, and Odal (Arno Luning), the Wiseman. While traveling something starts hunting them and they are trying to survive at any cost.

Directed by Andrew Cumming & written by Ruth Greenberg Out of Darkness is very suspenseful, dark, and ominous. There is a forbidding nature of this film that you as a viewer knows something bad is about to happen, and it does. Along with whatever is hunting this party of early men and women there are also the elements that they have to face. They travel through foggy hills and windy, and very cold weather. This adds another level of difficulty to what they are already facing.

The film keeps its audience guessing what’s going on by having piercing screams in the distance at night, and one by one some of the party of people start to go missing. Of course, the leader has to stand up for his troupe and so he goes off looking for whatever is hunting them. The director uses a very intense and penetrating score by Adam Janota Bzowski to create moments of dread throughout the film. The score is like a character in the movie it has various character traits all of its own. That is how important it is to the story and film.

As any horror movie with a similar story would do, the characters start to get paranoid and blame the other members of the group for what’s going on. They even get mad about who should be the leader once tragedy befalls their leader. Arguing ensues and fighting and bickering amongst themselves start to be the norm among the group. The time this film takes place doesn’t do the characters any favors. These are very limited intellectual people. This time there aren’t a lot of smart people.

There is a reason this film sat on a shelf for a couple of years. This is a hard movie to market. It’s a stone age horror film with subtitles because none of the characters speak English, they speak early man language. Whatever that is. It has some redeeming qualities to it though. Among them are its amazing cinematography by Ben Fordesman. He took this barren land and made it look gorgeous.  I don’t know where this movie was filmed but it’s a beautiful place. That’s for sure.

I thought Out of Darkness would seem like a great idea for a horror movie. In the right hands it could have been great. In actuality it’s good. The technical aspects like the score and cinematography are first rate. They save what would be a pretty bland horror film. The cast is good but the subtitles threw me off a bit. The dramatic and suspenseful stuff was lost in translation.  The writer and director had a good plan; it just didn’t come out in the final product. This isn’t by any means a bad film though. It’s just not as good as my hopes and expectations wanted it to be.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen