Review: THE DARK AND THE WICKED

An elderly woman tends to her bedridden husband as she goes about the daily demands of farm life. Strange sounds at night as the wolf alarm (clinking things on a string) goes off in the barn containg the goat herd. Among the animals is a vaguely human shape with glowing green eyes. The woman isn't quite the same after investigating which brings her two grown up children back from their lives to help out. The woman cuts her own fingers off and wanders off into the night. She is found dead the next day. Then, in a series of horror effects setups the remainder of the household, some of their friends and the nurse tending the old man are beset by dark and violent forces ... for the next hour and a bit and then it ends.

High production values, good acting and some impressive effects and even a commitment to strong atmosphere cannot save this film from its own pointlessness. Why were the old couple targetted by the evil? It's made clear they weren't churchgoers which would point to the devil (whose warm embrace has chilled a little over the years) or god (who seems to have become even more of a bitch since he got away with his pranks on Job) but it doesn't really make much sense as it then attacks everyone who comes within a cooee of the farm. Is it like Hellraiser where you go to hell regardless of why you started playing with the Rubik's cube of the damned? Trying allegory, is it a grim statement on the withering fortunes of people on the land? I have to guess about all of these because all I get from the movie itself is that there's evil in the neighbourhood and ... don't step in it. There is an approach to a lot of the horror scenes that tie them that has to do with perception but nothing is made of that beyond the fact itself; it can't even say  beware of doing this thing because it feels written rather than thought about the thing to beware appears to have been assumed (beat the hell out of me, though).

I have long railed against the cattle prod approach to horror in films like Insidious or The Conjuring where 90% of all the horror scenes are unearned jump scares which work on surprise rather than suspense. There's not even a lot of suspense on show here: a bad thing is about to happen and it happens. Next!

I chose this as an expendable school night extended Halloween movie, thinking from the title and the tile art that it would be, at worst, a campy extension of The Exorcist. That it then goes on in an apparent campaign of letting its audience know that it's a serious horror movie only makes its lack of substance worse like a Shakespearean actor stage whispering with thunderous projection: "This is scary!"

Currently on Shudder.