Dark Song, A (2017)
Starring Steve Oram, Catherine Walker
Directed by Liam Gavin
Screened at BUFF 2017
Screening at the Boston Underground Film Festival, A Dark Song marks the official arrival of writer-director Liam Gavin as a new, seminal voice on the horror landscape. Incorporating high-stakes ideas of loss and sacrifice with the quiet intimacy of a stage play, Gavin’s script introduces us to a damaged world that his two main characters must traverse in order to reach an aberrant form of enlightenment. The journey they embark on over the course of the film never has them traveling far, but the beings they conjure through black magic move great distances to reach them.
Fractured and hopeless, Sophia Howard (Walker) answers the question of how far you would, or could, go in order to search for healing. Desperate to rest and find peace, she has been preparing herself to be an ideal vessel for the divine to enter and provide her with the resolution she needs to go on living. She enlists a reluctant, drug-addled expert in the occult to guide her through a grueling series of rituals that will test both of them to their limits. Looking more like a computer hacker than a dark priest, Joseph Solomon (Oram) eventually agrees to stay the course in a remote house with Sophia. He slowly forces her to reveal the real reason she is willing to subject the both of them to the physical and psychological breaking point that the rituals require.
They’re not simply dabbling here; they are pushing their bodies and souls to the very limit in order to garner the attention of entities residing on the ethereal plane – beings that have no tolerance for this kind of meddling. The physicality of the rituals and their personal sacrifice is stretched out for months, showing just how deep of a commitment it takes to have even a slight chance at success. Instead of feeling drawn out, the rites of passage and level of suffering the two undergo give more weight to the proceedings, and a palpable sense of dread begins to develop.
Just like the characters are isolated and operating within a vacuum, the film itself feels like it was created with only its own interests in mind, untethered from the conventions of genre and unafraid to tell its own story in its own way. This is where Gavin’s hand as a filmmaker comes in and guides A Dark Song along through its smaller character moments towards the “big idea” sequences that transport the film to another plane entirely.
Enduring the rituals themselves and seeing their effects, A Dark Song is already firmly in the horror realm, so there is some question as to whether or not a late sequence involving Sophia is necessary at all. Coming face-to-face with what she’s helped to unleash, the scenes here are frightening but feel almost too pedestrian to be included in the film. Both characters feel doomed from the start, and they both should be forced to face the hellish consequences of their actions, but because there’s somewhat of a happy ending, not enough punishment comes their way.
Using aspects of paganism and occult rituals that are equated with the more natural, earthly realm and weaving them into the world of angels and demons suddenly brings an awesome sense of scale to the finale. But in the search to be saved, the accursed means used to reach salvation can, and should, lead to damnation.
A Dark Song arrives in select theaters, on VOD, and via digital platforms in the U.S. on April 28th through IFC Midnight.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
