Thursday 14 March 2013

In The Dark Half


In The Dark Half

Eerie.  It’s rare these days for a film to be eerie.  To be mysterious.  To withhold information, be ambiguous, create an atmosphere of creeping dread.  A horror film that’s not really a horror film, dark psychological drama In The Dark Half is a devastating exploration of grief and fracturing personality that’s genuinely eerie. 

On the outskirts of a West Country town 15-year-old Marie (Jessica Barden) lives alone with her DIY-obsessed mother Kathy (Lyndsey Marshal), neither one acknowledging the grief-shaped hole at the centre of their lives.  Something bad happened a year ago and Marie and Kathy aren’t talking about it.

Lonely and alienated, Marie spends her days running in the local countryside and hiding out in an old stone bunker/den where she ritually buries the dead and dying rabbits she steals from the snares of local poacher Filthy (Tony Curran) who lives next door to her with his young son and is regarded with suspicion by the local community.  Nursing a crush for Filthy, Marie agrees to babysit his young son Shaun while he and his only friend Steve (Simon Armstrong) are hunting on the hill one night.  When Shaun suddenly dies without explanation in her care, Filthy is distraught, consumed by grief.  Desperate for someone to blame, he’s a ticking timebomb of rage, threatening Marie, telling her he’s going to kill her.  Convinced Shaun’s spirit is haunting her, that he’s taken up residence in her bunker and that he wants to be reunited with his father, Marie is forced to confront the traumatic past that haunts her...

A tense, compelling little study of grief, love and loss that’s also a dark, psychological ghost story, In The Dark Half is a nightmare to review as it features a devastating final act twist of The Sixth Sense variety that throws a fresh perspective on everything that’s gone before.  The script by Lucy Catherine (Being Human) is lean and spare, its focus on character easily allowing the film to encompass both the mundane, downbeat, kitchen sink elements of the film as well as the more metaphysical ghost story while director Alastair Siddons makes a virtue of his low budget, tautly building a cloying atmosphere of claustrophobic dread.

The performances are excellent with Lyndsey Marshal both concerned and ambiguous as Marie’s mother Kathy while, despite being hampered by a dodgy West Country accent, Tony Curran’s grieving Filthy is almost a wounded animal, both pathetic and dangerous, a real and palpable threat to Marie.  As Marie, Jessica Barden (so good in last year’s Hanna and 2010’s Tamara Drewe) is astonishingly good, giving a raw, committed, soulful performance that drives and dominates the film.

Low-key, scary and unsettling, In The Dark Half is a haunting little Brit flick that deserves a wider audience than it’ll get.  Seek it out.

David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Language:
English
Runtime:
1 hour 25 minutes
Certificate:
15
Rating:
4/5
Release date:
10th August 2012

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