content warning: foul language, alcohol and drug use, gore, violence against women

Three young women are on a road trip to a heavy metal concert. While stopping for a pit stop at a gas station, they learn about a grisly series of satanic murders. They befriend a trio of young men in the parking lot and head on in for The Sinners of Satan concert.

We Summon the Darkness is a throwback slasher film set in the world of heavy metal. Alan Trezza’s screenplay is well researched. The language, references, and religious-fueled panic are all accurate to the late 80s. The dialogue has a great rhythm to it and a sense of believability.

The cast of the film is wonderful across the board. Alexandra Daddario, Maddie Hasson, and Amy Forsyth have great chemistry as the three young women looking for a good time at a heavy metal concert. Keean Johnson. Logan Miller, and Austin Swift have less to do as the three young men they meet, but they have an ease about them that allows for great character development once the two groups meet up. Most surprising of all is Johnny Knoxville as a televangelist, leading the fight against the corruption of heavy metal music. Watching him play this role was like revisiting the grainy broadcasts I could pick up with the antenna on the top of the old 12 inch black and white TV at my childhood home. Uncanny.

There’s an interesting turn going into the second act that makes things stand out. Yes, the film is a slasher connected to satanic worship. It goes a lot deeper than that. So much of the film relies on the twist going into the second act that I’m going to have to write around the major problem I have with the film.

The biggest issue with We Summon the Darkness is pacing. The first act hits the beats right for establishing characters, theme, and setting. The second act leads off with that first shocking murder, but then quickly hits an impasse. Things are happening, but nothing that meaningfully changes the stakes of the story.

Structure is very important to slashers. There needs to be just enough story established early on to justify what’s going to happen. That first significant kill leads into the second act, taking out one of the main characters with some shock value. The story then needs to pick up momentum leading into that third act where the body count really starts to rise.

We Summon the Darkness is ambitious. It’s trying to tackle a lot of issues at once within the form of the slasher. The problem all comes down to misplaced expectations. We have a core cast of six characters circling around each other when the kills start to happen. They are not the majority of the victims until the very end of the film. New characters get introduced to delay the final confrontation sequence, meaning the second act is an exercise in slowing things down rather than building tension. The third act does turn things around, but you need to get through the second act to see it. The result isn’t bad, just disappointing.

We Summon the Darkness is currently streaming on Netflix.