Dark Nature

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.

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.

After seeing the low rating for this movie I was really surprised how much I liked it. I generally enjoy horror movies set in the wilderness and so I definitely had to check this one out. My expectations were rather low because of the rating but I went in with an open mind and by the end I was genuinely surprised.

The movie starts off by introducing us to our main character and her trauma induced by her ex and while I am actually tired of this whole trauma theme because it's really overused in horror, I think that in this case it made sense and I was not turned off by it.

After introducing us to the rest of the cast, our lead named Joy played by Hannah Emily Anderson keeps hearing her ex and even starts seeing him in the woods. She is sure that he is following them but other group members also see and hear things so the question is: Are they really followed by somebody or something? Honestly the movie really takes it's time before something happens and during that time you have to endure these characters talking about their past and getting to know each other. But towards the third act the movie really picks up momentum and goes into a direction I did not really expect. They are some great makeup effects and a decent amount of gore that I really didn't anticipate. While there are some character decisions that I didn't understand and probably only were made to serve the plot I enjoyed this movie overall and I think this low rating is not justified. Lower your expectations and give this one a try if you like horror movies set in the wildness. [6,5/10]

I had never actually heard about this 2022 horror movie "Dark Nature" prior to sitting down in 2023 and watching it. All that I knew here was that it was a horror movie that I hadn't already seen. And thus, of course I opted to give it a viewing.

Writers Berkley Brady and Tim Cairo put together a rather bland storyline. Sure, there were some nice enough aspects in the movie here and there throughout the course of the 85 minutes that the movie ran for. But ultimately, I have to say that the storyline in the movie felt rather pointless and without any actual meaningful contents. And that made it a somewhat dull viewing experience.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, but they actresses and actors put on fair enough performances, though they had only so much to work with in terms of script and storyline.

Visually then "Dark Nature" was adequate. It was a not a movie that made a whole lot use of special effects to bring its storyline to the screen. The creature design was interesting enough, though I have honestly no clue as to what that creature was supposed to be.

Suitable for a single viewing, "Dark Nature" wasn't really all that impressive. And it is not a movie that I will be recommending for horror fans to rush out and get to watch. Nor is it a movie that I will ever pick up and watch a second time.

My rating of director Berkley Brady's 2022 movie lands on a four out of ten stars.

This was an interesting mix of folk horror and creature feature as an almost cautionary tale about facing your demons and overcoming past traumas. It had some solid potential however because of some missteps in execution, landed pretty middle of the road for me.

I thought the plot/concept was really interesting and was a foundation for something relatively different and pretty cool. They ended up negating a lot of their spook factor and intrigue by showing the "antagonist" like... WAY early and pretty much in full form. 25% of the time it was shown it looked creepy and dope. The other 75% it looked quite silly and drew me out of the moment. Regardless, there was still some pretty dope execution of sfx/makeup throughout.

The two lead best friends were quite good and really kept me in the moment and engaged. The doctor was good and everyone else was on the not so convincing side.

I do think they could have beefed up the story a bit more. Felt a little bit like a very long proof of concept. Despite this, as a whole I think this was pretty successful and certainly not a waste of time. Would recommend.