Dark Was the Night

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Regina P I think it started off great... and then it just slowed down and ended up with a disappointing ending. I don't mind slowing down before the climax; it's supposed to be that way, actually. But this just ruined the momentum altogether instead of building anticipation and revving me up for the finale. I don't know how I expected it to end, but this was a whimper. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 06/05/24 Full Review Audience Member It was a well done movie. Kevin Durand is a fantastic actor and did a great job. Love the story line based off a “true story”/phenomenon that happened in the late 1800s Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 05/20/24 Full Review Cari L It was really good. The writing was well done along with the cast and acting. The atmosphere was perfect for a creature feature film in a remote setting. The downfall of the movie, however, comes to the creature reveal and the last 5-10 seconds of the film. The creature doesn't make biological sense and just looks like they couldn't figure out what they wanted to model it after, so they just decided to mush everything together and decided that that was good enough. Additionally, they really cemented their lack of biological awareness in that they made the creature not the only one. For it to be an undiscovered animal that is moving into developed land, a creature that large would have been few and far between, and would not travel in a pack-like formation, descending on the church in a large force. If it were a pair or a trio of these creatures, it would make more sense. Additionally, an animal that they framed to be THIS territorial (alongside the context provided in the film) would be unlikely to travel with other members of its kind due to the competition of resources. Other than those issues, I liked the rest of it. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/21/24 Full Review Martine S I loved this film. People are always too quick to judge films like this when they first come out, but seeing it now in 2023 its excellent. far better then the movies we get now. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 03/01/24 Full Review Ivana J It's scary and it was a decent story line. But the ending could have been a bit stronger. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 12/27/23 Full Review Ronald H As limited budget horror movies go, Dark Was the Night is a step above, thanks to a good script, deliberate pacing, excellent cinematography, and most of all, capable acting not usually seen in such fare. Kevin Durand is Paul Shields, the sheriff in a small upstate New York town. He's wrestling with a separation from his wife, shared custody of their young son, and the loss of his other son in an accident. But he doesn't have a lot of time to dwell on his own problems, because horses, deer, and humans begin to be slaughtered by an unseen creature in the woods. Many of them are found high up in trees. Shields investigates with the help of his new deputy Danny (Lukas Haas), a New York City transplant with a few issues from his own past. It's well over an hour into the film before we see anything more than brief glimpses of the creature, but we see him in all his horrible glory in the last act. While some critics considered him rather unimpressive, I disagree. You would not want to run into him on a country road. Much of the above sounds like a bunch of melodrama and horror movie cliches, but "Dark" manages to use them in a fairly intelligent way. There's not a lot of wasted dialogue---Durand is taciturn and Haas is not too talkative, either. Shield's family problems are not overblown, and they fit comfortably into the story without seeming like an extraneous subplot. Saving the reveal of the creature until the final act is not a new device, but it's filmed impressively (in a church where the residents of the town have taken refuge), and it's damned scary. This film doesn't break any new ground, but it's not intended to. It's designed to scare and entertain without evoking unintentional laughter from incredulous viewers as so many horror flicks do, and it mostly succeeds. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 09/08/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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