Tuesday Special Edition: OUT OF DARKNESS (2024) Movie Review
A slasher film set in the Stone Age? That's what it looks like, but there's more to it...
In late 2023 I became aware of an upcoming film called Out of Darkness, which had been making waves at film festivals. From what I remember, it was a horror film set during the Stone Age rather than the modern era like most horror films. I saw the projected release date and made a note to see it. The films like this I can remember are Alpha (2018) and 10,000 B.C. (2008) and although I never saw the first one, I actually enjoyed the second. In this age of remakes, I also want to encourage new ideas.
As the release date drew closer the reviews were good, and so this past Sunday off I went…
(poster image courtesy of cinematerial.com)
The Plot
Around 45,000 years ago, a group of primitive humans make a dangerous journey across the sea under the leadership of Adem (Chuku Modu), who, when the broader tribe found its hunting grounds denuded of food and faced starvation, found some willing to follow him west to the lands of his childhood stories. These include his pregnant mate Ave (Iola Evans), his brother Geirr (Kit Young), his son Heron (Luna Mwezi), dissident tribal elder Odal (Arno Lüning), and Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), who is referred to repeatedly as a “stray” and I assume is not from the original tribe but picked up along the way.
They arrive in a new land and cannot immediately find food. To make matters worse, they’re not alone. The band is being watched by something unseen that shrieks terribly in the night. When Heron is snatched from the fireside, Adem becomes increasingly unstable as the band sets off to rescue the boy.
The Good
*The opening sequence in which the cast are telling stories around the campfire is cleverly used to describe how they got to the new land and the trouble they’re already in. That’s pretty creative.
*The acting, casting, and character arcs are good. Modu’s Adem is arrogant, sexist, a bit pervy, and has Charismatic Leader Syndrome and the already-apparent uglier traits get worse the more stressful things gets. Meanwhile, Young’s Geirr is clearly struggling in his dominant brother’s shadow and Oakley-Green’s Beyah has to rise to the occasion as things go to hell. I think they all did a really good job. And making them largely dark-skinned is historically accurate — the “Cheddar Man” who lived in Britain 10,000 years ago looked more like someone from Africa than modern England, and humans 45,000 years ago would be even closer to Africa in terms of ancestry. Given how the film seems like more of a character study or even a morality play (more on that later), the focus on character is good.
*The visuals are absolutely striking, as are the sound effects. With the exception of some things I’ll get to later, this movie looks and sounds great. It was filmed in the Scottish Highlands and really captures the emptiness and desolation of the place.
*It’s not too long, around 90 minutes or so, so it won’t take up too much of an afternoon.
*The creators invented an entirely new language, Tola, for the film. Although the whole movie being in subtitles won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, it shows the amount of effort they put into this.
The Bad
*There are some really trippy shots, including at one point the scene being shot upside down. If the intent was to disorient the viewer just like the cast disoriented in the new land, it didn’t really work — it just came off as weird and didn’t look good.
*There’s some padding here, like nature shots or shots of the sun going down.
*Some characters’ actions late in the film are not foreshadowed well and kind of come out of nowhere. Not going into detail for spoiler reasons, but I suspected the filmmakers wanted to engage in some kind of commentary.
*Finally, there’s a big plot twist that turns the film into something that reminded me of a more moralistic episode of The Twilight Zone. If they’d cut the padding I’d mentioned earlier, that’s what this movie could have been — just with much better production values. If you want to get the twist’s full impact, be careful about what reviews you read — only one review I’d found spoiled it outright, but some others dropped some pretty big hints about a “message” that prompted me to look into it too much.
The Verdict
A lot of interesting ideas and potential, but given the enjoyment vs. present-day ticket prices, better save it for streaming or, to get the full sensory impact, the dollar theater. 6/10