Gavin examines grief in an enthrallingly antagonist manner, Sophia’s hardened heart not so much looking for solace as it is longing for retribution.
While the supernatural elements are never in doubt, they’re only part of the emotional equation.
Dark song rating movie movie#
What’s fascinating is that the movie isn’t interested in engaging in easy jump scares or typical horror theatrics. The director’s way of revealing information is eerily effective, an aura of dread seeping into the very foundation of the narrative, allowing for just the thought of things going wrong to be enough to send chills up even the stoutest spine. The film revolves entirely around these two characters, Gavin allowing the pair’s time together to evolve and mutate alongside the ritual’s increasingly twisted and ugly progressions, insight into why they’re both in the house determined to see things to the end coming gradually and not all at once. Instead, Gavin looks at Sophia’s hurt and despair through a lens of fortified resilience, her inability to admit just how much she is hurting potentially the greatest roadblock to her and Joseph successfully completing the ritual. It is an examination of grief and loss, but not in any sort of cliché or melodramatic way. The film digs under the skin, taking its time to get to know its two primary characters as they travel along this strange, surreal journey to a place beyond imagining. His allegiances are to the Abramelin and himself, not necessarily in that order.Liam Gavin’s A Dark Song is a hypnotically tense occult thriller, the young writer/director crafting a superior narrative feature debut that’s beautiful in its sinisterly startling vigor. “The least of what something is.” Oram makes this figure as detestable as he is knowledgeable, a last-resort guide who cares not for Sophia’s plight. “Science describes the least of things,” Joseph says. “A Dark Song” attempts to carve out a space for itself in the space between belief and doubt, superstition and knowledge. Taking place in stages over six days and demanding an ascetic routine that initially includes the denial of food and water, the process seals off the secluded country estate from the outside world in more ways than one. Like a binding contract, the Abramelin must be carried out by someone of sound body and mind - a tricky proposition, given that the bereaved would be a prime target audience. (For what it’s worth, the invention of the Abramelin and its demand for intricate, long-term preparation is credited to 14th-century Egyptian magician Abra-Melin.) It makes sense that if there could be a kind of pact between the dead and the living, it wouldn’t be taken lightly. Séances are rarely given such serious treatment on film. “Once it worked, twice it didn’t.” As he pours a salt border around the remote house she’s rented in Wales, he informs his employer that there’s no turning back now. “I’ve done this three times,” he tells Sophia. Initially, Joseph is as skeptical about the prospect of communing with spirits as viewers might be. READ MORE: ‘The Circle’ Review: Tom Hanks and Emma Watson Star In a Misguided Story of Technology Gone Wrong - Tribeca 2017 'Aftershock' Review: A Vital Look at the Maternal Mortality Crisis for Black Women in America 'My Old School' Review: A One-of-a-Kind Alan Cumming Performance Undone by Shrug-Worthy Hoax That revelation is what persuaded a reluctant and deeply unpleasant spiritualist named Joseph (Steve Oram) to take up her cause an offer of £80,000 apparently wasn’t enough.
Soon we learn that Sophia is attempting to contact her dead child, although the circumstances of his death remain opaque. Lately she’s only been allowed to eat between dusk and dawn for the next few days, she’ll fast entirely. Intially it’s unclear exactly what the Ambramelin might be, but it’s clear the prep involves much more than digging out the Ouija board. In anticipation, Sophia (Catherine Walker) spent nearly half a year abstaining from all sex and following a strict diet. That’s certainly the case for “A Dark Song ” in writer-director Liam Gavin’s debut, a woman is so grief-stricken that she subjects herself to what might be the most arduous, drawn-out séance ever captured onscreen. Called the Ambramelin, this obscure ceremony is almost as stressful to observe as it is to enact - Gavin wants us to feel the mental, physical, and spiritual toll it takes on those desperate enough to invoke it.
Sometimes it isn’t the house that’s haunted it’s the people inside.
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