And Soon The Darkness (1970)

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Horror Weekly and Soon the Darkness. We asked one horror fan me what they thought of this movie and I'm here with my answer. I'll explain why this question didn't get posed to the larger horror weekly community in a second. There's going to be a lot going on in this episode. I'm fresh off of having attended Monster Paloosa and Pasadena which was amazing. Thank you so much to Joe and the Monster Channel for helping to make that happen. I wrote an article on something that was dear to my heart which was the use of the technique of slow motion in horror and they kindly put it into the official souvenir program for this year's Monster Paloosa. I'm going to post that in the Friends of Horror Weekly supporter group. I already did a video in there explaining a little bit of what went down to Monster Paloosa. I'll be doing a lengthier one that goes into more depth pretty soon. If you'd like to join that group and you enjoy what we do here, we're trying to give horror fans as amplified a voice as possible. We need your support to do it. It's $0.99 some month right now to join and support and be in the best horror community online. I'll put that link in the show notes for you to check it out. It's so easy to come in. Come out if you don't like it which I can't imagine why. But that'll all be in the show notes for you. There's a pretty obvious limitation with the horror weekly podcast model and it's not really searchable as of right now unless there's some technique to search through podcast episode transcripts that I'm not aware of. Let me explain what I mean. When I'm considering talking about a horror movie in the hidden gem category, obviously one of the first things I'll do besides just check in with you all in the horror weekly community to see if it's something that you've seen. I put a question to the Friends of Horror Weekly group. If anyone had seen this movie and most people hadn't heard of it and I don't think anyone had seen it. A few people had seen the incredibly terrible remake from 2010 of this movie, The Ansoon, The Darkness I'm talking about from 1970. But the next thing I'll do is just search it online, right? Like are there tons of podcast episodes about the particular movie I'm thinking of? Are there a lot of YouTube kind of explanation videos and reviews of it? And in this case, there aren't many. There's a couple YouTube videos that are useful, one really interesting one from Horror Scholar Kim Newman that goes into pretty good detail. It's about 20 minutes long. A couple reviews, the reviews on YouTube, those videos don't have many views. And then there are a few podcast episodes. I didn't have a chance to listen to any of them, but I did. I found two or three. And obviously, if you search even a horror movie that's not mainstream popular, not huge like John Carpenter Halloween or a quiet place or whatever, but if you search a movie like Let's Care Jessica to death, I'll find 100 podcast episodes in the last 10 years about that movie. Even though it's obscure, us horror fans are really passionate and horror reviewers are also passionate. But it occurred to me while I was doing this that I was sad that there were only a couple podcast episodes about and soon the darkness 1970 because I think it's a fantastic film, limited in some ways, but really, really good. And then I realized most of the hidden gem movies I've pointed to over the years, movies that I love like night school or timekeepers of eternity or whatever, that you wouldn't find my episodes on them. Pardon me, I should say our episodes because we're making all this together, but the horror weekly episodes, you wouldn't find because they're not in the title, right? I don't just do straight up reviews usually. So this time, I wanted to make sure I wanted to plant a flag in the ground and point to and soon the darkness just by in the title so that it would be findable for someone in the future who comes across this movie and either realizes it exists and wants to hear someone say something about it before they decide to invest two hours to watch it. Or someone who watches it and was like, oh my god, I love this movie. I wonder if I now also love this movie. I want them to be able to find this episode. I also have kind of a secret reason for choosing to talk about this episode now, which we will get to as we discuss the film. I'm going to start spoiler free. I'm going to stick to it this time. Basically, I might reveal a couple of character notes, but nothing major plot twisty wise until I give a very definal alert towards the later half of this episode. And then I will go into spoilers. I'll have to because there are some big things to talk about, both in the pro and con categories for this movie that you couldn't discuss if you didn't do spoilers. So let's get into it. Forget the soon. And now the darkness. Now, I'm sure some of the more observant listeners of this podcast have noticed that I don't go in for a big list of details of who directed and acted and wrote and all that kind of thing for movies. I'm trying to keep these episodes short. Most other horror podcasts that I listen to do that, like all of them really do it. And I figure if you get interested enough, you can look up a lot of those things yourself. I'm going to make an exception here because the horror connections that sort of spiderweb off of the people who are responsible for this film are incredible. And I don't think a lot of these names are super well known. So I think it's called for here. So this movie is a British film made in 1970, like I said. It's directed by Robert Foost, who directed to my mind one of the hundred greatest horror movies of all time called the abominable Doctor Fibes. He also directed the sequel, which is pretty underappreciated called Doctor Fibes rises again. I mean, it's not near the first one, but it's a Doctor Fibes movie and it's pretty well done. He also did the revenge of the Steppford wives and then he did the Devil's reign. 1975, the movie that gave us Michael Myers' look tangentially. And in his bio, it says that the reviews for that movie were so harsh that it may have ended his film career, which is a shame because it's got a weird glory to it. And soon the darkness was co-written by Brian Clemens, who I'm guessing is still famous in England and was certainly super famous at one point. He's not the creator of the Avengers TV series, but he certainly is responsible for a lot of its look and tone and success. It says he's responsible for casting Diana Rigg in the Avengers, which just changed everything for that show. And he did the TV series Thriller, which I think might have also been gone by the name Menace, which I like. But here for this horror podcast, he was also responsible in tandem with Hammer Films for Dr. Jackal and Sister Hyde and then his only directing credit is the fantastically strange Captain Chronos vampire hunter. But wait, there's more contider of the facts already, but we got to do this because this movie stars Pamela Franklin. Now, Pamela Franklin won an award for her performance in the prime of Miss Jean Brodie, I think is the name of it. This is a movie where she was starring with Dave Maggie Smith and she won the award. She acted in the suspense film The Nanny across from Betty Davis. So this is a classy, talented, accomplished actor. And here's the amazing thing that I love her from her Wikipedia. It says a lot of what I just told you. You know, she was BAFTA nominee for this. She wanted an award for this and then it goes right up front. Like Franklin made her acting debut at the age of 11 in the film The Innocence. Again, one of the greatest horror movies ever made. She later established herself as a scream queen in the 1970s by appearing in the film's Necromancy and the legend of Hell House. I noticed they don't mentioned the television horror movie she made, Satan's School for Girls, but considering the scope of her career and considering in literally the most endearing factoid you could possibly have to make me love and support you, she opened a and co-owns a bookstore in West Hollywood with her husband and I think their one of her sons helps her run it. But it feels just like a Vincent Paris art collector horror icon situation where the fact that she's been dubbed a scream queen in the midst of all these other things is just spectacular. And we're almost done here because the cast for Ansoon the Darkness isn't large, but Michelle Doe Trees, her co-star, was also in the witches from Hammer and the Blood on Satan's Claw. So the horror DNA of this thing runs really deep. The letterbox synopsis of this thing is pretty simple, it's two young English women go on a cycling tour of the French countryside when one of them goes missing, the other begins to search for her, but let's jump into the many masterpiece that is Ansoon the Darkness 1970. I gotta be honest, I almost gave up on this movie before it even got started because the version that I watched, which was a mistake, we'll get to that in a moment, was on prime and I don't know if all the versions are like this who knows, but the opening music that plays over the credits as we kind of follow the two roles starting out their bike tour across France. The music is some of the most annoying music I've ever heard in any film let alone the horror genre. Thank God the music later in the film, it was sparse is much better. I don't know who chose this beginning piece, but I rewatched a couple of the scenes for this. So I now I've seen this basically one and a half times to record here and when I loaded it up again I saw the credits begin I heard the first note and I just muted out immediately until the credits are over it's awful. And now let's get this out of the way. Why was the prime version not the one to watch? Well there's a really interesting choice that you the viewer are gonna have to make if you have not seen this film before and it's gonna hinge on two questions. One, do you trust me? And two, do you speak French at all? Because I had read a review of this film that turned me in its direction to try it. I know I did this movie even existed a week ago and the review had mentioned that there's a really creepy interesting effect that happens in the film where the two girls are kind of just riding through the French countryside and they don't they only speak a little bit of French and they run across characters as it goes who are jabbling at them in French and they are only picking up a word or two because they they don't speak much and because the characters are talking really quickly and you're in the position of the characters if you speak French right you're I could I guess the couple words that the French characters are saying like I got police or I got you know bad or whatever but I was in the same position as these poor girls where I was I was going on very incomplete information so when I loaded this up to watch it I got to the first one of the first critical scenes where there's some interesting exposition going on from the French characters and I didn't have subtitles on which is I turned them off on purpose right I'm a huge I use them all the time right I had to actively find them to shut them off to watch this because I didn't want that to happen and then it translated anyway and then I realized that the versions on prime is just version on prime is automatically translating the French characters which sucks now don't get me wrong if you're an even worse subtitle addict than I am then it just might be a deal breaker for you you're like I'm not gonna watch this movie if I can't have subtitles on and I get that but I immediately shut the movie off and went and found a version on on daily motion wherever the hell I found it where I could watch it without the French characters being automatically translated and I'm so glad I did and I think this movie is good enough to watch a few times in your life maybe not necessarily within the span of a couple days like I have but I'm here to tell you the experience of watching this and being as lost as the characters are because you're not getting the full information as you're overhearing the French characters talk gives this an anxiety and creepy factor that is pretty unique right there's a Mike M. and Row film that I really like also very Hitchcockian feeling like and soon the darkness is called watcher I picked it as one of the best horror movies of the year in whatever year that came out I can remember now and there's a plot point in there where there are characters speaking in a language that Mike and Maraudes character doesn't understand and there's a great reveal towards the end of that movie and you know when I watched it I had subtitles on but they did not translate the I think Hungarian characters because I think they knew that this was a real thing that the movie was trying to do that a lot of the punch that was gonna come in the last you know 15 minutes of that movie was gonna depend on you not knowing what the Hungarian characters were saying and I would argue that that effect is just as pivotal here in and soon the darkness so I would recommend watching it with in a non subtitled version first and then rewatching it at some point with in on prime or whatever where the French characters are being automatically translated this is up to you you may believe that you don't care about twists and you just gonna go into it I mean you may be a person who hasn't seen this movie is gonna listen to be spoiled a hell out of it like 20 odd minutes from now because you just don't care and fair enough that's you I loved experiencing it the way I experienced it now what's funny is in the absolutely fucking god awful 2010 remake of this film you could feel a heavy hostile slash terrestas influence on it they really hoarded up because they felt like there was too much thriller going on and I know I know that sounds like it could be good and fun right but things are only fun if they're done well a hot air balloon ride can be fun but a hot air balloon ride done by someone who's drunk and incompetent not so much but in the 1970 version we start with the girls in what seems to be a pretty small French village one of the characters is like you know doing the griswald we got to make all the sights were on a timetable we can't stop kind of feeling that's Pamela Franklin's character Michelle the trees his character is obviously like the party girl but the reason I bring up the terrestas thing is it feels similar ish even in the 1970 version in that they're having a good time but they've decided explicitly to kind of go off the the tourist path and try to experience the real France under their own power and there's this push pull between the characters of you know is this just a relaxing trip where we're trying to get to see the real France which might be just really boring the same looking road for a hundred miles and the the alternate of let's find somewhere where there's some life and a party and a nightclub and make this like a real vacation to remember and the place that we start this movie and is perfectly situated for that because it has just enough charm and character and activity to feel promising like there might be a bigger version of this down the road that'll be more fun but it also has like a sleepy like a oh is this is good as it's gonna get is it gonna get more rural for beer during our bike trip because this place is pretty boring for people their age meanwhile as we're spending time with them we see that they're being observed by some creepy people one of the possibly sinister characters we see from afar is doing like is teamu Jean Paul Belmando kind of body language and look and smoldering vibe and then the girls set out again and this is where I realized that this movie might be amazing because I don't know about you but especially this time of year I'm all in for daytime daylight horror Texas chainsaw masterker midsummer kind of feel and this movie belying its title is so bright but something really interesting happens because of the setting of this movie and because I think it was just really really well done we're basically gonna center on a road one of the characters in the film, one of the few things in English that a French character can can muster in this film. She just had a frustration after saying a bunch of stuff in French goes bad road. This is going to center on a really bad road, picture like a mole Holland drive of France. And it's really bright and really well lit. And there are little offshoots to the road where it feels like you could just go off and, you know, suntan or take a break from biking and you'll be fine. But there's other places where it feels like if you stray off the road for even just a few seconds, you end up in really dark places. One of the characters who plays the, you know, like that classic role in the horror movies, the ones who know, like one of the characters you would run into at a gas station or something like, don't go there because they know the lore of the place and you as the visitor don't. One of the characters set mentions at some point that they're expecting rain or it's going to rain. And I haven't forgot that happened because the sky stays so blue and things stay so bright when we're on the road until it finally arrives in an absolutely wonderful moment towards the absolute end of the film. So daytime horror with pockets of like really brutal darkness, Jack. But the other weirder thing that I was hinting at when I was saying, talking about how this is well done, but also creepy and a sort of unique way is, right? There's different genres of subgenres of horror films. There's the ones where you feel claustrophobic or trapped, right? Like the the bariades of the world or the vanishing, which this movie has a lot in common with or like the recent movie centers where they end up barricaded in the juke joint for a chunk of the film. And then there's like the geographically open-ended kind of horror movies like Jason takes Manhattan. Sure, a character might feel trapped in a moment when they're cornered or something like that or they can't escape Jason, but it ranges all over the place. Well, I mean, it spends a lot of time on fucking boba like it. None of the characters really feel claustrophobic or trapped to me. It feels like they could go anywhere. So can Jason. He's gonna come after you. Or like the exorcist, which you know starts in a rack and then you know comes home, but like the characters might feel emotionally trapped. Linda Blair certainly trapped, but she's more trapped with a demon. They don't characters don't feel geographically trapped in mass. This movie is a weird combination of both. It seems like these two girls could go anywhere. They could make any kind of choices about whether to try to run away and escape through a field or stick to the road in their bikes or seek help from the few people they come across. But they also feel trapped. The road feels like open-ended, but like that you can't get off of it. Being on the road is bad and any choice you make to get off the road is worse. So it's all flat and landscaping. So it feels wide open, but they also feel stuck. And because the actors in this are so good, it sort of registers on their face when they're making choices at moments like how can this still be happening? I'm going not, I've gotten out of here yet. And because the landscape is so expansive and wide open for a lot of it, it has that feel of like the bird's eye moment from Hitchcock's The Birds when the camera zooms up in the air and you're looking down at the little town from above and everything looks so small and vulnerable as the you know the armada of birds gather. There aren't a lot of from above shots in this film. There are a few and they're really good, but a lot of times you're just flat. You're at like eyes view, I love a view if you were just standing watching them from afar, but because the landscape is so huge and wide open and these girls are so small on their little bikes, they look vulnerable and in trouble even before and he of the bad stuff really happens. And it makes everything feel like on edge, but like it hasn't tipped over the edge, right? They're in trouble, but they're not. They're just having fun. But wow, they could be in big trouble here. They barely speak the language. They're totally alone and virtually defenseless and there are hundreds of miles from civilization it feels like. And another thing the road lets the filmmakers do here is occasionally someone will just tear by them going ridiculously fast like picture the truck in pet cemetery, he barreling down the road, but even quicker. So they clock that it's happening. Someone will go by on a motorcycle or someone go by in a car or someone will go by on a truck. So you can tell that this place is sort of inhabited, but everyone is in such a hurry and they don't give a shit about the tourists. They don't seem to care whether they're going to live or die or they're in trouble or having fun or whatever. And what's also cool is they keep as they keep the girls have to keep going back and forth because they're in trouble and they keep having to go check back to the places they're familiar with to see if they can find police or find help or whatever. As we go back and forth with them, we keep passing this mysterious figure in the fields who's like one third children of the corn and two thirds the sinister killer for untruthetective season one who's just like Boeing. So we're gradually building a list of suspects. Is it the people in the town? Is it the person who's mysteriously following the girls? Is it the the truetetective guy in the field? Is it someone who's just tearing by and maybe they're just doing really fast surveillance on them? We don't know, but it's starting to get worrying. Then there's a whole sequence where we're kind of just hanging out with the girls. The sinister stuff is stopped. They're starting to fight because one of them, the character Kathy Michelle, the treason's character is tired of all this biking and working to get to yet another boring mile. She's like, fuck this. I'm just going to stop and suntan and enjoy my vacations, you know, in a nice spot off the road. And Jane, Pamela Franklin's character is like, no, we're griswilded and we'll take a small break, but we got to get moving. And honestly, this segment goes on a little long for my taste, but I still love it because and let's face this right now, right? One of the most common complaints. When people are talking about horror films, particularly like slasher's or like murder thrillers, like this one is, is that the characters are interchangeable, they're disposable, they're not fleshed out at all. They don't feel real. They feel like they're just there to get killed and make bad decisions. And what this sequence lets us do is it lets us spend time with two very, very good actors with well written, but not overwritten parts. They're not, you know, it's not like pointing to on the nose. They feel real. They feel like real friends who are going to have a real falling out because they have a real disagreement about what this vacation is supposed to be about. And even though I felt like this, I don't know, seven, eight minute stretch of the movie got a little boring, it pays off later because you really care about these two people and you really get the dynamic of their friendship, but they split, right? Pamela Frank, Jane's aside, she's going to keep going, but she's going to stay on on agenda on the itinerary. And Kathy's like, yeah, I'm getting a tan. Come hell or I water. I'm not going to lose 10 pounds biking for the next, you know, 18 hours till we find something else interesting in France. So they split up and now the POV's diverge. The film is very definitely going to alternate between spending time with this one vulnerable girl who's just trying to suntan. See if her friend will come back and give up on, you know, their, the, you know, being mad at her and come back and get her or if she even cares, make sure like I'll just catch up to her down the road. She's got to stop at some point. And the other friend who's now proceeded on to the next even smaller and creepier village from where we started the film. But here's where the absolute magic happens. About 24 minutes in in the prime video version that I watched. We're hanging out with Kathy as she's doing her best to enjoy a sunny day off the road of her vacation. The cameras top down on her laying on a blanket with her eyes closed. And we see a shadow disturbingly pass over her face. That she doesn't sense it first, but then she or her face wrinkles a little. She senses that something's wrong and she opens up her eyes. And these are beautiful shots. These are frameable on a wall shots. And what happens in this like one minute block is so good, so clever. I don't think I've ever seen a movie do what's happening here. It feels like something like Paul Thomas Anderson might do if he was making horror. Because she opens her eyes and stares up into a bright blue sky. And then you see a tiny little plane leaving like I had time. tiny little trail way way up in the sky. Like picture the first arrival of the plane in North by Northwest. And when I was first watching this, I was as confused as her. I mean, I know it's a horror movie. She doesn't know she's at a horror movie. So I more quickly came to the conclusion that someone was creeping around her improvised campsite. But you see the confusion on her face, because for a second you think, oh, the plane up there, you know, block the sun for a second. But then that can't be. That doesn't feel right at all. Physics don't work that way. It couldn't cast a shadow that far down on the ground. So she gets up, she looks around. She even calls her friend's name thinking maybe she came back, maybe she's trying to prank her. Like she's confused. But then it's kind of like, I don't know. Now I don't like the feel of this. I'm all alone here in a strange place, but maybe it was the plane. So she starts gathering her things. It's like those moments in the Blair Witch project when they come out of the tent and they're like, did some change when we were sleeping? And as she gathers her stuff, that's when she realizes that some of her clothes are missing, because she hung up some clothes to dry or whatever while she was suntaining. So now think about where you are if you're in her shoes, right? You're trying to relax. Your friends ditched you or you ditched your friend depending on the interpretation, right? You're just trying to enjoy some time in your holiday. Someone blocks your son, and it happens all the time when you're laying on the beach. You open your eyes, look up, there's no one there. But there's a plane. Maybe that didn't wait. That can't be right. Now you gather your stuff, you're like, "Oh, fuck it, I'll just get out of here." I don't know which direction she would even go at this point if she would continue on to find her friend or just head back where they came from. But now some of your clothes are missing. So is something creepy going on? Or is this just coincidence, right? Plain did something weird with a shadow. And now the wind blew some of your clothes around. So she steps further into the woods to see if she can locate the missing clothes. And the further back she goes, the more sinister it gets. But this all takes like serious acting shops for a, what could just be like a bee thriller horror plot. But now she looks really unsettled because her clothes are missing, shadows are forming. What's happening here? And then she hears a car. So she runs out to the road because this is going to be the end of Texas Jameson Maziger, right? She's gonna hitchhike, she's gonna pick up someone, she's gonna go locate her friend. And this regular civilian car flies by her, like it's in the Ford versus Ferrari. To be honest, the first time I watched this, I thought the cars on this fucking road are more of a threat than the killer. Like she's gonna get, that cemetery gauged out here. Now this isn't a spoiler because it's literally in the synopsis I gave. But we cut away from our time with Kathy here because something obviously is going wrong. And this is the point where she's gonna vanish. Poor Jane who has gone ahead is spending time in, you know, the Texas Jameson Maziger French version of this three building town that she's found. Understanding every 90th word of French she hears, she gets unnerved enough to go check on her friend. She finds some disturbing signs at the campsite that she locates. And then she's approached by stalker number one, Jean-Paul Belmondo T-Moo. Style shows up in a great shot, face obscured, behind a tree, on a motorcycle. And this is where the mystery's deepened. Some good stuff happens here. And then we're walking with our two characters, Jane and the stalker who's revealing stuff about himself through the woods. And again, to my taste, this is the thing that holds this. This is why I call this movie a mini masterpiece and not like an outright masterpiece. It's not quite horror enough. I mean, it's way better than it was done this way than the horrified 2010 version, which is totally incompetent. We'll get to that at the end. But it is a little slow here. And in this case, and I know, it sounds like I'm making, I'm moving the goalposts for this movie a little bit when I might hit other movies for the same thing. But again, it's execution, right? This goes on a little too long. I think the director screwed up here a little bit. The scene of them in the woods feels like it could lose two minutes off of it and still be fine. What saves it here is that Pamela Franklin is a fantastic actor. You feel every ounce of confusion and fear and pissed off with this. Like, why is this so hard? Why are there so many weird threats? Why can't our vacation just be good? Why'd my friend have to fight with me? Maybe a little self criticism. Why didn't learn a little more French before I came on this trip? You see all this and more kind of playing across her face as she's walking with this guy, trying to figure out what the fuck's going on. But after she gives this guy a chance, she picks up something she doesn't like from him and she flees through the woods. And from that moment to the credits rolling at the end of this movie, it's a bullet train plot-wise compared to what has come before. So it's all good to me. It'd be different if it made the same mistake three or four or five times in the body of the movie. But there's really only these two scenes that go on a little too long. Everything else feels just right. You know what, I've decided as I talk about this that I love it so much and I want you to see it so much because I suspect that you have most of you haven't. Or if you have, it's a long time ago that I'm just not gonna do major spoilers. But I am gonna do one thing that you could pick up on as a mild spoiler here. So warning, it's not like a full spoiler, a plot spoiler or anything like that, but it is you would be able to possibly figure something out from what I'm about to say. There's one character here because she locates the police. There's people in the village that are helping her. One's a woman, this could be a Pamela Vorey situation. It feels wrong that it would be the first stalker that we meet, they could be the killer, but that might be a cool little, you know, the Butler actually did it move. And there are several characters who, the interpretation of their behavior could be that they just don't know how to approach her or they're not used to dealing with tourists and they come across as menacing or they're trying to help. And there's one character that if this character's trying to help, I clearly know 'cause I've watched it, but if this character's trying to help, then this character is doing it in the worst possible way over and over again. And it backfires pretty bad on this character and it was the best moments because I wanted this character to pay the price for being creepy. Now, there's a really good version of this in an American horror movie, this thing that I'm talking about right now. And it's the Brad Dorif sequence in Urban Legend, right? Like he's a character that could be helpful or could be menacing, probably not both, but Urban Legend was smart enough to give a very specific reason why Brad Dorif's character was a bad communicator in this situation. This movie does not do that 'cause the character I'm referring to here, doesn't even have a language barrier problem, speaks pretty much perfect English. So, they had no reason to be as lurkingly ominous as they are through a lot of this film. I fucking hated it. It didn't feel incompetent. Interestingly, 'cause it could be that, right? Like in a lesser well-done film, it could be, oh, we just needed this character to be a possible suspect. So we frayed it with this unlikely behavior, like who would just loom around and seem menacing when they were actually trying to help. There actually is a reason given in the movie and it's pretty good for why this is sort of happening. But the sensation I got and settled on from this, and again, this could be me, I would love for some of you to, especially if you're in the Friends of Horror Weekly Group, or if I ever post about this film on the page to promote this podcast episode, maybe you can just comment with it there. I ended up settling on, there's something profoundly wrong with this person too. They might be like two clicks to the leftover from being a serial killer themselves. I think of it kind of like the Van Helsing thing. I'm always struck by how profoundly odd and possibly harmful Van Helsing can be in a lot of versions of the Dracula story when it's filmed, right? The Anthony Hopkins Van Helsing in Coppola's Dracula is insane. Like imagine having the Van Helsing from Coppola's Dracula pets it for you for a week to just get a feel for how untrustworthy chaotic this character is and how you might come to harm just from being around them. So that's my read on this character that we're talking about here. If you watch it, you'll know it is because even though the movie does a pretty good job of giving us a nice selection and a sampling of suspects. There really aren't a lot of characters in this film. So now there's some good chase sequences, A la, any great in the woods slasher, or like think scream franchise, where you've got fantastic chase sequences. There's some good classic body discoveries, like what happened in any good Friday the 13th or Halloween movie. When the villain is revealed, it's not so much that the villain is some kind of like Ted Bundy, evil genius kind of format. It's worse than that. And there are some good facial expression acting from the final reveal of the villain that are genuinely unsettling. There's some attempted essay. So, you know, if you're not gonna see anything happen, but it's threatened. So just warning, but Jane has demonstrated to us by the end of the film that she's made of formidable stuff and can very much take care of herself in a lot of situations. I was worried for the villain in the final showdown with her, that was rooting for him. I was not at all, but I mean it in the sense of like, I was worried for Ringo in Tombstone when Doc Holiday steps out of the shadows and says, "I'm your Huckleberry." And honestly, I just like that this is a very good, very well done, very memorable, very unique feeling, not that there's no other movies like this. Like I said, the vanishing is a touchstone. It's got some tonal similarities to like a hotel cool guardian or the royal hotel, whatever version of that you saw. It definitely feels like a much older version of Trees does in parts, but it's also very much its own thing. It feels like even the people who were influenced by this movie were tried to copy it in later dates, didn't get close enough to it to really feel like a comp. And I love that this sunny bright outdoor film, even though it goes to some really dark places, as it's title, stays bright almost all the way through until the very end when the rain comes. It just is such a cool tonal shift to happen at the very last second. I mean, there couldn't be like more than two minutes left in this movie when the weather changes. There's a great shot of rain falling on a painted glass behind which you see something really blood curdling and kind of sad to be honest. And the way the rain hits the glass, the glass is clear, like you can see, sort of fine. And then the rain hits it and it gets really muddy because there's dirt and dust on the glass and you're like, oh, I know what's gonna happen. The rain's gonna wash the dust away and we'll see this disturbing detail even clearer. But the rain starts hitting harder and it does those little like mini circles from droplets effects. And you can see through the window differently, clearer in spots and more obscured in others. And it feels right for this kind of movie because the characters have fought really hard but like you can draw several conclusions from the end. And it leaves on a very haunting note where we've been so involved with the people and caring about the people or upset at the people or scared of the people that the landscape kind of moved into the subconscious as you're watching it. And the landscape comes forward and it gives this road an overlook hotel feel like an always gonna be bad feel. Like no one can fix this feel. God, I love this movie. Now this isn't like a death line situation or some other horror gems that I've talked about where they're like really gory. This is definitely on the Hitchcock thriller side of horror. More horror than most Hitchcock. So set your expectations accordingly. If you're in the mood for a bunch of saw traps, this is not the movie for you at this time. But I loved it. Now I had said at the beginning of this that I kind of had a subterranean reason also for choosing to not only watch this and kind of research it but also to make an episode on it. You know, these are hard times I would say. Like you know, to the friends of horror weekly group, I know there's a couple of people going through some really tough stuff. I wish that one of my talents was for inter-personal support. But I've always found that I tend to make things worse inter-personally not better. I don't know what's wrong with me in that sense. And I wish that I could just say, you know, encouraging stuff in a way that was helpful to people all the time, but I don't trust myself not to make situations worse in the things that I say accidentally, not meant. So what I've done here for anyone who's left listening at this point is, I've also chosen a movie that's a comfort horror to me that really cheers me up. And there's a couple reasons why, right? Like if you're a horror fan and you're also struggling with I'm trying to avoid things that are negative for a period of time until I stabilize or whatever, or you're trying to deal with, you know, like real big op evils in your life, I'm going through something really horrendous currently. And it's led to some really bad outcomes, right? And I just want you to know specifically that, you know, I feel similar what you feel, right? Like not the way you feel it, but like I go through similar stuff. I let myself down and let some friends down with a podcast appearance made some bad tech choices because I wasn't thinking right about it. And it's just from struggling with, you know, for lack of a better word depression. Bad things can happen and you can feel bad about the things that are happening. But if you're a horror fan, or at least me, I'll just speak for Reena. I don't find myself avoiding horror films when I'm going through bad times in my life. I've never, that's never happened to me. I've never been like, oh, I got to, you know, swear off horror or void horror or whatever. I don't know, maybe it's just never hit me that way. But changing the kind of thing you watch temporarily while you're trying to, you know, fight your way out of something dark makes a lot of sense. I can only tell you what works for me. I can't make recommendations for what'll work for you in circumstances like this, right? But I'll just do a sample size of one. It's the best I can do. I'm not brave enough for, I think, foolhardy enough to think that I have answers for any other human beings in the world. For me, there are a couple things that are soothing. Horror movies are soothing a lot of the time. The genre is soothing. Horror fiction, reading it is soothing to me. Not all of it, like the really dark disturbing stuff isn't. I've heard very bleak things about "Bringer Back", which I'm about to go see. That may not be the kind of movie you want to pair with something really bad happened to you the morning of and now you're gonna go see that movie. Or maybe you're wired that way, it's fine. What I find soothing that helps me in circumstances like this sometimes are movies that are sparse on people and long on ideas and nature. They're like minimalists, right? There's not a lot going on. You don't have to track like 16 storyline centers for as good as it was. I mean, that movie has a lot to say. You gotta fight to keep up. And I think the ethic of it that I put into it when I'm watching movies that I think are trying really hard is that I should try really hard as a viewer to understand what it's trying to do at least. And soon the darkness is none of that, right? There's no real set of complex messages. There's probably a deep message buried in here but if there is it's one or two at most, there aren't a lot of characters to track. There aren't a lot of backstories, there are not a lot of storylines. It's clean. It's visually minimalist, right? Few settings, a lot of them are great to look at. Not a lot of people to try to meet and read, but most crucially, and again, this is just me now. The thing that encourages me the most, the thing that feels best if I'm feeling dark about things is when something great is happening, right? When I feel like someone has pulled off something wonderful and against the odds makes it even more special, right? I mean, what are the odds that I could watch horror for as long as I have to have done two horror podcasts for years and years, hundreds of episodes at this point and that I could still find a horror movie, not even that obscure. with people who have done all kinds of other horror stuff that I've watched and heard of and appreciated and it would still be so its own thing so original so well done so special so memorable When things like this happen I feel like Matt Damon's character in the Martian when he plants all the little potato things and works on him on Mars and then walks out and sees that one little green shoot coming up from the ground I wouldn't imagine there are many English language horror classics left for me to discover in movie form and on an almost monthly basis I discover that's wrong and this genre has yet more to give me and that helps me in bad times when it happens feel a few shades less dark about things Now hard emotional turn here I do have to address the abomination that is the remake of this film just real quickly I was surprised that David Smith said that the movie was fine and I suppose if I didn't love the original one so much then it would be if I was being fair about it right there's a lot worse movies that I've seen that have been made but it's so offensive how wrong footed this movie is how it takes everything that's great from the original turns it into a joke even Carl Urban can't save that movie which I don't know he's done some questionable movies too if you're as ancient call me what the fuck but there's the one thing I would do want to say is Odette Annabelle who's a co star of and soon the darkness 2010 she's great like she's good in it it's just perplexing with good people end up in bad things and I just feel so bad for her horror career in general because she was in the unborn which is a movie that I fight for from time to time I don't think it's good don't get me wrong but it's interesting and watchable and I've seen it twice and didn't regret either time that I watched it once because I just was craving to see Gary Oldman as an exorcist and once because I found a couple of the sequences in it you know genuinely creepy but man to have your horror credits be that and then this pile of garbage oh it's just so unfortunate for Odette now we all know the aggregate review sites except for possibly letter boxed our garbage right like metacritic is you know data short and rot tomatoes is corrupt cesspool a lot of the time but as I've argued many times when you aggregate a bunch of stuff the number ends up in kind of an interesting place I just got an argument the other day on the Facebook page where someone was saying that sinners was a bad poorly done movie which is just absurd obviously but the thing is it's like 96% on rotten tomatoes critic score and then like 96% audience score and the question I have in those circumstances that we've talked about on this podcast before is sure rot tomatoes is inaccurate and and corrupt and it can get game to whatever but find me another horror movie that's 96% in both scores that's bad right is very very very hard to do that because the scores tend to at least be in the ballpark which is why and soon the darkness of scores fascinate me because it's 38% critic score on rotten tomatoes but 60 something percent audience score it's 85% audience score on Google and it's 3.4 on letter boxed which might as well be you know 24 in 24 out of 10 for horror movies because all the aggregate sites give worst scores to horror movies that almost any other genre so it's a movie that apparently critics hated that audiences love and that is kind of my favorite kind so if that sounds like it's for you check it out now one last thing on the topic that I broached before I just want anyone who's following the page or in the group to know that if you're going through a hard time I'm rooting for you I think about you and like you know I want things to work out for everyone the horror genre is pretty special there is a thing that cheers me up that's just fun and I don't do enough fun stuff on here because my personality isn't geared that way but I don't want to end even though I love this movie and I find it soothing because of the things that I've said before I can't imagine a lot of people are going to take it that way so I'm going to give you something slightly less disturbing as my fun cheerful thing but this is the best I can do considering how I'm wired but here we go there is a thing that cheers me up immensely I've probably mentioned it way early in the beginning of this podcast this but years I'm sure I didn't do justice to it but it's a really short music video less than five minutes horror themes that I've seen I don't know maybe a hundred times at this point I watch it a lot to when I'm going through something rough to cheer myself up it's called Raven the Grave I'll link it in the show notes to this episode it's from Aaron Chupa and Little Sis Nora but it does two very specific things that only the horror genre can do in fun mode because it wouldn't work in other genres so think of the moment in the thing when Kurt Russell turns around and sees the spider head thing character crawling away and Palmer says you gotta be fucking kidding well that moment is funny it doesn't blow the tension because what's happening is so outrageous and the special effects are so grey and the movie is so scary but it is like a relief valve letting some steam out and it is hilarious when you when you see it it's the juxtaposition of someone saying something funny flat and like real to the point in the middle of a really really tense moment this wouldn't work in like other formats right and there will be blood when Daniel they Lewis's character in the first 20 minutes sequence where there's no dialogue and he's just trying to get oil or whatever when he falls in the well or the thing in the well falls of my for what in what order it happens right when he gets injured if he was just like you gotta be fucking kidding me like it would blow all of the tension that the movie was building it would not work which is why it's not there but it can work in horror so in the rave in the grave video the idea is and again I don't know whatever warning for anyone who's upset or you know whatever because I mean I didn't know half my father hit all that half of the family from us so I never I only knew one set of grandparents barely I lost them very early on so like I don't know what that feels like you know to have to deal with that in a like real close up way but the plot of this is that this the grandmother of this family has died and then there is a mysterious gathering happening at the gravesite or under the ground of the gravesite and I love it right but like I've seen the couple people who are like YouTube reactors to it and they're shocked they're they're jobs hit their keyboards but the granddaughter makes her way into the grave and it is amazing it is pure universal horror it's pure actor Pretoria is going into the grave in brighter Frankenstein there's missed there's stone steps there's torches it actually looks a lot like a hammer is probably a better comparison but it's just fog drenched horror greatness and the granddaughter makes her way down into the grave and then she hears this chant from very far away there's a chant and the chant you start to pick up is going grandma grandma and she goes holy holy fucking shit under her breath it's amazing and that's when you realize that this video is going to switch over from like gothic darkness maybe ominous maybe we're like in a tool video to like just sheer fun may have and horror special when it does that this song is incredibly catchy incredibly fun the performances are great so that's special thing number one that only horror can do right like the you gotta be fucking kidding me moment works uniquely well in a horror format but then there's just two minutes of full on appreciation of gothic horror in the in a way that's super fun and not really really even though the subject matters got a disturbance. I'm not gonna lie, that's why the YouTube reactors are stunned. But here's the other really special part that really cheers me. There's a group of older people, they have an unforgettable chant as there's learned a marching towards this railroad track. Then we really quickly get a scene that's a lot like the school bus scene from the monkey, if you know, you know. And then this voiceover narration happens very much like Michael Jackson's thriller. It definitely feels like an inspired this and the voice I wish I could do justice to I wish I could just play it for you Honestly, but the whole episode of Get Flag I think but the voice goes After the old people with like the train thing the voice goes and so they died Don't don't worry there. It's not over for them in the video The voice goes and so they died and then it says with no fear of death because the only thing life will never tell you Is what will happen after it and while this amazing line is being spoken with the music playing underneath it We see this guy who's like the Tony Todd final destination character of this video who seems wiser He seems like he knows more of what's going on than the other people are just partying and he just shakes his head like no It's never gonna tell you now. I know as you're listening your thing. Oh, you're overthinking this like video song fun Pop I mean if you watch their other songs they're clearly like some kind of hybrid of weird alley-eckovic and I don't know Dresden dolls or whatever, but I just want to linger on that line for a second because those two things Shouldn't work together You shouldn't it the line shouldn't be they had no fear of death because the only thing life will never tell you is what happens after it Like how is that consoling and that's when this stupid simple music video Prompted a thought that I'd never really articulated to myself before maybe subconsciously wondered from time to time, right? But wouldn't it be worse if we knew a hundred percent for sure what happened after death and it was bad Imagine living your whole life knowing with a hundred percent certainty That something comes after and there's a distinct possibility. It's awful. There's a protection in the not knowing There's a gambler's spirit that rises in anyone Who's like you know what it's better off not knowing fuck it. Let's have a rave. Let's have fun There's a protection in the mystery of it. It's like the fog in the video. You can't quite see through it So what's on the other side of it could be horrible or could be amazing and in this video it turns out to be amazing In fact that turns out to be the point of the whole fucking song and the fact that horror fans can go to dark places and Enjoy dark places and enjoy dark things and have an Uncomfortable spirit inside of them that says you know what when we get to the dark place a party's happening that Shears me immensely so I will link this in the notes to this episode in case you want to check it out That's it for and soon the darkness Thank you as always for listening join us in friends of horror weekly where we are creepily moving towards our goal of a hundred subscribers would really really Make my week if we hit that goal by the time I record the next episode consider it if you haven't been there before All the best you all I'm thinking about you until next Thursday. How do great horror week?