Saturday, 18 September 2021 18:54

Dark, The/ 2005






THE DARK

UK, 2005, 94 minutes, Colour.
Maria Bello, Sean Bean, Maurice Roeves, Sophie Stuckey, Abigail Stone.
Directed by John Fawcett.

When American Maria Bello brings her troubled teenage daughter to visit her estranged British husband (Sean Bean) on the south coast of England, we are warned that darkness is ahead because of sinister dreams and visions. What follows is a mother searching for daughter drama with touches of ghost story and horror – in fact, the background story of the 1950s and physical abuse of children is quite horrifying.

The screenplay spins the suspense out, especially as we gradually discover who was the villain in the past and who is the girl that is haunting the mother and possessing the girl. Can she be saved?

The cast do their best with it all. It is not one of those slasher horror stories beloved of multiplex audiences. It is more of an intelligent thriller with some gory touches and one of those gloomy endings. (It is not too dissimilar from Silent Hill, a mother and possessed and lost daughter drama – where Sean Bean is once again the father).

1.An interesting horror thriller? British setting? British and Welsh mythologies?

2.The atmosphere, the Welsh locations, the cliffs and the coast? The sea? The ordinary homes? The underground hut? The interiors? Lighting and darkness? The musical score?

3.The title – and its reference to the literal dark, to the dark of the past, to the dark of the mythological world?

4.The scene with the sheep, the herds over the cliff? The 50s, the cult leader, the ordinary people also going over the cliff? The sheep, the mass suicide? The role of the leader?

5.The opening, the sense of realism – but mother and daughter getting lost? Sleep? The dark? Ominous dreams? Finding the house, Adelle and Sarah, finding James? The reconciliation? James and his decisions to leave the family, stay in Wales? Wife and daughter, their memories, their clashes, coming to see him?

6.Ordinary life, James in the house, his work? Adelle and her settling in? Sarah and her being with her father? The locals? Dafydd and his helping with the work?

7.The past, the 1950s, the cult leader and his daughter? The cult leader and his influence in the church, taking the people, his symbolic name of The Shepherd? The mass suicide? His wanting to get his daughter back from the other world? Her return? His treatment of her, his brutality, trying to exorcise the devil?

8.The eerie atmosphere, Adelle and Sarah on the rocks, Sarah’s disappearance? Adelle diving in the water to find her daughter? The other world beyond the water? The water as a portal? Adelle unable to find Sarah, finding Ebril? The child of her dreams? Plaintive yet sinister? Ebril’s story, Ebril guiding Adelle? Daffyd and his help, the brutality of his death?

9.Adelle and James, her pining for her daughter? James and his inability to help? The search in the house, the rooms, the echoes of the sinister times? The legends of the netherworld, of Annwin, the researchers in the library?

10.Adelle and her interactions with Ebril? Diving into the sea? Sacrificing her daughter? Adelle and Sarah coming back into the world – but James not able to see her? The irony that she was a ghost? Sarah and her being united with her father?

11.The evil aspect, Sarah being possessed again by Ebril? Adelle and her being in Annwin with The Shepherd?

12.An interesting exploration of horror conventions along with a sinister mythology?