The Dark and the Wicked Review (Film, 2020)

content warning: grieving, blood, gore, self-harm, death by suicide, violence against women, violence against children, violence against animals

A family reunites as their father is slowly dying. Grief isn’t the only thing taking over. Something strange is happening on the farm, and the mother tries to warn her adult children away. The noises and shifting objects happen at night, but the personality changes can start at any time.

The Dark and the Wicked is the new horror film from writer/director Bryan Bertino (The Strangers, Mockingbird). Bertino has a signature tone to his films. The characters always feel lost, unable to change their lives on their own. Change will come, but not by their own actions. An outside force will make the status quo change, and the characters can do nothing to stop it.

The big difference in The Dark and the Wicked is the outside force. Usually, Bertino has a clear mechanism for the disturbance. The Strangers has the Strangers, Mockingbird has the camera, and The Monster has the Monster. Bad things start happening in The Dark and the Wicked without being able to see what causes them.

There’s an evil presence of some sort. It sets off the strung up bottles used to deter the goats from leaving the barn. It pushes the chairs ever so slightly in the kitchen. It rushes through the house like a chattering whisper no one can understand. But they hear it. They can’t avoid it or escape it.

It’s interesting to see Bertino go into this sort-of haunted house narrative since so much of his style deals with subtle changes to the action onscreen. He cooks suspense into every shot of the film. A simple focus shift can seem terrifying in his hands. The mechanics of his films pull from the subtle worldbuilding of the black and white Gothic.

The scares of The Dark and the Wicked are only as successful as the composition and focus of the scene. There are scenes in this film that play out like Bertino’s typical scares. The family will go about their day-to-day business while something happens around them. Sometimes, you can see something happen in the background, which can be terrifying; other times, it’s just the sound. A shot of someone standing at the sink while a bottle clinks in the distance isn’t as active as a shot of someone in the shower realizing something else is watching them.

The film becomes more aggressive going into the second act. The adult children find their mother’s diary and begin to learn what is happening around the house. The conflict shifts to whether or not to believe in their mother’s theory that something is trying to take the father’s soul. Either the strange things are all a coincidence or something evil has taken over the house; there can be no in between.

This is where Bertino’s style best serves the story. Anyone can hide behind an immersive sound design in horror and make the audience imagine what could be going on. Not many people can show the audience exactly what’s happening while hiding it from the characters onscreen. Bertino forces the audience to be active viewers in the story. He creates a bond using the secret terror lurking in the background and still finds a way to scare you when the background comes to the foreground.

The Dark and the Wicked is streaming on Shudder.

Pick up your free copy of SD Media Digest Vol.1: Jan-Mar 2021.