I almost turned off this movie after just ten minutes because it seemed pretty bad. Somehow, I just wasn’t feeling the atmosphere and I didn’t like the costumes. I mean, here we are, watching people living in the Paleolithic era (Old Stone Age) and all of their clothes are clean and neatly sawn. And there’s not a speck of dust on their beautiful faces. However, something was telling me that I should stick with this one. The direction was quite competent and the camerawork excellent. As time went on, the movie got better and better culminating in one hell of a finale. A poignant, memorable, and gripping finale that will make you forget all about that rocky opening act.
I urge you to give it a chance as Out of Darkness is a captivating horror movie definitely worth watching. It’s about a small group of humans, just six of them, who migrated to a new territory during the Paleolithic era. After a sleepless night, they start exploring and then hear the bloodcurdling sounds of some kind of strange animal. And soon they realize that they’re being hunted. So, you might call Out of Darkness a sort of prehistoric Predator movie. Mostly because it features an overwhelmingly powerful creature hunting woefully equipped humans in the wild. Prey took the franchise in that direction two years ago.
Oddly enough both movies share a similar “inside of a cave looking like an eye” scene. However, you should know that the movie we’re talking about today was actually completed back in 2020. That’s two years before the release of the latest installment in the Predator franchise. It was actually in development since 2015 when the director Oliver Kassman first started throwing the idea around with Ruth Greenberg and Andrew Cumming. They actually came up with an entirely novel language specifically for this movie called Tola. To be more precise, Daniel Andersson did, basing it on Arabic and Basque.
There aren’t a lot of movies about the life of prehistoric humans. I vividly remember watching my first movie about them, Quest for Fire, starring Ron Perlman, back in the eighties or nineties. Now that was a truly frightening and quite sobering experience. I couldn’t stop thinking about the living conditions of these humans. And the same thing kept happening with this movie too. I simply could not shake that feeling of the constant struggle, danger, and, from my current moral perspective, responsibility. Responsibility to not just make it, but also to procreate. Something that I’m guessing most of these guys and girls were doing just instinctively.
I think I’m getting a bit sidetracked here but only because this is that sort of a movie. Out of Darkness is a short, 80 minutes long movie featuring excellent cinematography and even better acting. And don’t get me started on the music and the sound design, they were stellar. The atmosphere is captivating and incredibly suspenseful at times. That suspensefulness comes from a feeling that anything might happen. There are no rules, no protagonists, and no clear-cut endings you can see. The main story deceptively follows a familiar action/horror recipe only to keep twisting and subverting your expectations.
At its core, Out of Darkness is a survival thriller willing to go the distance and not afraid of the dark and macabre. Filmed near Gairloch in Scotland, it takes full use of the untouched and stunning nature of that area. It’s truly amazing what shots you can make just by using a high-quality drone these days. The wilderness here looks daunting with little or no wildlife and inhospitable weather. The forests provide no refuge as our band of early humans doesn’t know what’s in them. Just a couple of days ago, I watched The Promised Land starring Mads Mikkelsen about a man trying to cultivate an arid part of Denmark.
And that particular tale of survival takes place in the 18th century. You can look at Out of Darkness as a character study, drawing parallels to our modern society. Moreover, you can see how particular characters make decisions that are inherently tied to their role in this little group. And this opens a whole new line of inquiry about individuality and other aspects of being. On top of all of this, we have the situation with the mysterious and bloodthirsty creatures living in the woods. Never before I have seen a movie start so weakly and end so strongly like this one, so make sure you give it a go.
I think that McTiernan’s The 13th Warrior and Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk are two movies relatively similar to Out of Darkness. Finally, if you’re looking for more modern movies set during prehistoric times, do check out 10,000 BC and Alpha. To be perfectly honest, both of these movies don’t even come close to Werner Herzog’s documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I strongly suggest you check it out as it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Director: Andrew Cumming
Writers: Ruth Greenberg, Andrew Cumming, Oliver Kassman
Cast: Chuku Modu, Safia Oakley-Green, Kit Young, Iola Evans, Luna Mwezi, Arno Luning
Fun Facts: The filming took place during the COVID-19 pandemic although luckily the cast was small and there almost no sets as most of the movie was shot on location, in the Scotland wilderness.
Rating:
IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7527682/
