Demoníaca

A dreadful, disquieting & diabolical nightmare that reeks of death & foreboding from the first frame to the last, The Dark and the Wicked is one of those horror entries that relies on its silently brooding & gradually escalating atmosphere to crawl under the skin of its viewers, and is a haunting, unnerving & bone-chilling terror that more than lives up to its name.

Written & directed by Bryan Bertino (The Monster), the story begins on a highly promising note and the setup, location & stylistic choices only help magnify the bleak mood & sinister aura. There is a lurking & looming presence of an evil that lingers over the family and although Bertino touches on the themes of love, loss, grief & guilt, he doesn't dig deeper to aptly explore those topics.

While it would've helped to have the story journey inward into its characters and the characters themselves to be more fleshed out & exhibit more depth, the film still makes do with the given script, and conjures some genuinely effective scares with its eerie camerawork & ominous score. It doesn't quite stick the landing but the uneasy feeling is sustained throughout and the performances are convincing.

Overall, The Dark and the Wicked is one of the creepiest films to surface in recent years and is absolutely unforgiving & unrelenting in its intensity & uncomfortable aura it exudes. The uncanny cinematography & unsettling sound design are major contributors to its effectiveness but with a more refined script, this could've gone places. A cursed chiller with inescapable devilry brewing under the surface, Bryan Bertino's latest delivers on its title.

The problem with the Horror Genre (as is the case with some other genres), is that it is pretty broad in terms of scope and definition; and that within the definitions which fit, there are too many variables. For example, can a truly well-made "horror" movie include comedic elements? Should it? How much gore should be employed? Do suspense or thrills or adventure add or take away from the genre? There is no clear-cut response to any of this, and so what appeals to one horror-fan, may not be as appealing to another.

FOR ME, what defines a horror flick - gory or not - is that it should make the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up in fear. The Dark and The Wicked did that and more. I am in no way exaggerating when I say that 1. I FELT scared to the point of wondering if I was entertaining 'energies' I should not entertain by watching it; 2. I wondered if I should turn it off; and 3. I said a couple of prayers and rebuked the devil at one point near the ending. Even now, I just got goosebumps.

Now - will everyone find it as "scary"? By the reviews. It's obvious some people did not. Who knows. Maybe there was some subconscious or phycological trigger it touched on in my mind which just "worked". Regardless, in my opinion, it deserves a higher score than its current 6.1 IMDB rating.

The GOOD: The acting by the two leads who play brother and sister, is nothing short of FANTASTIC. The storyline too, is pretty great in that it is different enough to not immediately remind me of anything else like it. The cinematography deserves praise, and for the most part, the dialogue is in the category of good. As for the (jump) "scares", we've seen them before. I don't blame them for this, as what really in cinema today has not been DONE before? The pace however, is also good and it allows for the tension to build up between these 'scares' (for lack of a better word). In as far as realism (a big part of cinema for me), this film earns MOSTLY top marks. While there are instances where you second-guess the actions people take or do not take AND there is a major plot device to do with a country doctor, which fails (I will not give too much away in order to avoid a spoiler), it's all in the realm of believable and it makes you wonder what you would do in the same situation.

The BAD: Lamentably, the acting by a minor character is very plastic and felt forced and out of place.

The ending could have, and SHOULD have been done SO much better than it was. Gauging by the content of the film, it was apparent that the filmmakers had it in them, so the fact that no one seems to have pushed for a better conclusion is sloppy, disappointing and would be completely unforgivable if the rest of the film had not had the compelling moments it did.

Roger Ebert once said, "It's not what a film is about, but how it is about it." I had to take that into consideration when rating and reviewing 'The Dark and the Wicked'. This is admittedly not my type of horror movie. I struggle with supernatural horror, because I have zero belief in it and thus it does nothing to unsettle me. However, I have to admit that this film was done very well, and that if I were unsettled by those types of films then this one would have done the trick for me. This film is going up some people's alleys big time.

This is such a beautifully shot film. Director Bryan Bertino is so good at framing what is on screen, he doesn't even need what's on screen to be all that impressive for it to look good. I also love the inventive camera angles he comes up with. They don't always work to heighten the scares or even the tension, but they add a touch of class to the mix which is so often missing in the horror genre.

My biggest gripe with the film would be all the jump-scares and the scenes where the demon is basically just trying to scare the characters rather than harm them. I understand why they have to be there to pad the runtime to 90 minutes, but they are still very frustrating to watch. I also didn't really connect with either of the two lead characters. They were very flat (understandable in their situation to be fair) and that made it difficult for me to care all that much about their fate. The final 20-30 minutes of this film is an absolute blast though I'd have to say. The pacing rockets to life and there are some fun and pretty messed up scenes. 'The Dark and the Wicked' is worth a watch.

This one is a hard horror movie to watch and yet it is brim packed with everything that scares you; from the shadows on the wall to the dark figure in the corner of the room, to the gross out scene with the flock of goats and the slick symbolism with the devil and the goats on the farm. The director uses many horror techniques so well it is hard to fault even though the film is very slow and to be fair to the other reviewers it is somewhat boring and will not appeal to many people; even die hard horror fans will find this one hard going!

The film gives the viewer no easy ride with no explanations, no backstory, not much characterization and no simple ending but builds such a lugubrious atmosphere of dripping dread in the style of movies like Hereditary that you cannot but be chilled to the bone with its minimal but effective style.

I want to give it 4/10 but I have to give it credit for being "real horror" and not "Hollywood horror" so it gets an always fair and honest review from me with a solid above average 6 hatchets on the horror scale for this very different approach to horror movie making!

Enjoyable horror that sets the tension from the start and then slowly builds on it. Well shot and solid acting. Nice subtle scares carry you along till the end. I don't understand why so many bad reviews, as I've said it's an enjoyable indie-horror.