Dark Nature

Looking for a movie, and my husband wanted to skip this one because of the low IMDB rating. I wanted to give it a chance, and I'm glad I did.

Dark Nature is a slow boil, but it pays off. No use of CGI or any over-the-top special effects. It's s very physical movie, and I could feel the struggle the characters were going through. Camping in the Rockies is a great adventure, but one wrong move can mean life or death, and I could feel the heart-pounding fear in each character.

I knew absolutely nothing about this movie, and I suggest other viewers do the same. Everything was a surprise, and that added an extra chill.

As I said, slow boil, and then takes off.

Dark Nature as a horror movie is not very special .There are interactions and scenes such as flashbacks that aren't timed well. There's an unsettled nature in story flow, an unhealthy tension. Focussing too much on the main antagonist leave the story crawling in the midst of it's runtime. However the rich visuals of mountainous forests is a plus, But Audio is not so much. What the movie does best is giving shape and colour to how trauma work it's slowness at the start picture the recess and the second half reemergence of trauma, that's clever work. Performances are neat. Dark Nature's creativity is what makes it worth.

No pun intended - the movie uses quite a few cliches to say the least. It is supposed to be empowering and if you suspend your disbelief I reckon this works well ... again not minding that it is quite on the nose on certain things. Not that those things do not exist in real life .. they do unfortunately.

That said, trying to get rid of the past ... while going on a trip generally speaking is a good thing. Unless you the trip you take is this one right here of course. Suspense is there and if you go with the flow it can be an interesting and suspenseful watch. A low budget horror movie that has some (few) interesting ideas ...

"Dark Nature" is a Canadian horror film written and directed by Berkley Brady in her directorial debut. The film stars Hannah Emily Anderson, Helen Belay, Madison Walsh, Roseanne Supernault, and Kyra Harper all of which you probably never heard of.

The plot revolves around Joy, who is recovering from an abusive relationship. She joins her friend's therapy group on an isolated mountainous retreat. Led by a doctor with experimental methods, the group is soon forced to confront a monstrous entity and since this is a no-spoiler review this is the story in a nutshell.

I would say as a low-budget first attempt, "Dark Nature" has some good things going for it. The actors doing a good job of looking scared, especially towards the end of the movie, and there is a good plot progression. Unfortunately due to low-budget filming, cringe dialogue, overuse of flashbacks and an anticlimactic ending it is really loses a lot of points in my book.

The opening scene is surprisingly the worst offender in this entire movie, which is odd, since it should be the easiest one to film, inside an apartment (or a motel room or some sorts??) the dialogue is cringe and the camera work is horrendous. However it gets better later on and becomes somewhat watchable.

Again, without any major special effects, no CGI and limited number of cameras, Brady manages to product a reasonable film minus some dubious editing cuts. However I felt the ending could use a closure epilogue. It's not that it ends on a note where "viewers can figure it out", it just ends without a closure to the main character Joy. The movie is fairly short (sub 90 mins) so I think a 3-4 minute epilogue could do this film a lot of good and maybe even elevate my score from a 4 to a 5.

Considering everything this is one of those not fully-baked but watchable soft thrillers. My exact score is 44 / 100.

A trauma therapy group follows their quack doctor into the Canadian wilderness on a survivalist excursion for which none of them are remotely qualified. It's unclear what the point of the excursion is supposed to be since the doctor's explanations are pop psychobabble gibberish. The characters' lack of preparedness or an objective helps explain their subsequent bickering, complaining and idiotic decisions; but it also makes them frustratingly unsympathetic. Suffice it to say the gang of intrepid idiots soon find themselves isolated and stalked by a standard horror trope until the rushed and inevitable finale. The Ritual (2017) wasn't great but it did essentially the same thing first, better and with more relatable characters.