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:
Jessica Barden,
Tony Curran, Lyndsey Marshal, Simon Armstrong, Georgia Henshaw, Richard Goss
and Tim Lewis
Language:
English
Runtime:
1 hour 25
minutes
Certificate:
15
Rating:
4/5
Release
date:
10th
August 2012
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