Sometimes in the Dark – review

Director: Carmine Cristallo Scalzi

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

Haunting, I think this is the take-away word from this Italian feature. Listed on Amazon as both horror and arthouse, there is a layer of folk horror to it but that perhaps is tempered by moments that might be said to be Lynchian and, though it has explosive moments of violent horror, it mostly meanders through its running length in a way somewhat reminiscent of Tarkovsky’s Stalker (in pace and atmosphere rather than topic). In fairness it perhaps does not have the genius, the auteur vision of Tarkovsky – then not many do – but it is a brave, strong film that in its oneiric stylings will lose many an audience member but equally draw many in.

the spectral girl

After beginning with a narration by Serena, a young girl, we meet Guiseppe, her father. He walks into his house attic and within is his son, Giacomo, who sits by a reel-to-reel tape recorder. This is the only technology we really see in the film and, whilst it indicates a certain modernity, the rest of the film is timeless. Having met them we move into the forest and meet Gustavo – a vagrant who scavenges for things of no use to anyone else. He seems to see a child – a young girl who is blurred, but later we see clearly that she has white, dead eyes.

water as blood

Having seen her, he passes through the woods until he sees, at a river, Giacomo. The boy is dipping his hand in the water but then he lifts it and sees that it is covered in blood. He looks at it stunned until the blood fades. This seems to be through Giacomo’s eyes and later we discover he can see spirits. His father comes to find him and bring him home – as it is time for a farewell. He passes by villagers who watch but say nothing, also past Serena and his mother, until they get to a room and in it is the corpse of a newly deceased old woman (perhaps his grandmother).

a flash of vampire

He has to kiss the corpse and her eyes seem to open (again to him). In a vision we see a hand with blood and sores and Giacomo’s hand reaching to shake it, on contact there is a flash of a vampiric face – later we discover this to be Gorecki. Following this we see him with Serena and they discuss where the dead go. He takes her to the attic and shows her how he uses EVP (not named as such) with the tape deck, so that he can hear the dead (he sees them as well, of course).

a feast of flesh

Elsewhere Gustavo goes to a house where he finds a group of foreigners who are all ill. They have open sores, many wear bandages over their faces. A couple of them, Gorecki being one, have unnaturally white eyes. They all suffer from a disease and they eat flesh and blood. Later we will see Gorecki lead a night time procession where he knocks upon a door and then attacks a villager and bites his neck, but in this first scene we see one of the bandaged ones gorging on raw flesh from a bowl. Meanwhile Giacomo sees the ghost of the old woman.

staking

The doctor attends the old woman and the narration tells us that there is a disease that causes the dead to not remain dead and he knows how to deal with it – that is by a stake through the chest and then she is taken for burial. The film continues in this manner, the narrative relayed through a combination of Serena’s narration and the imagery, the atmosphere dreamlike at times, nightmarish at others – mostly through Giacomo’s lens. The old woman is not the only staking we see.

the eyes

Eventually it becomes clear that Gorecki is drawn to Giacomo and, when he eventually takes the boy to the foreigners’ house it causes the villagers to take action… The pace of this is languid, dreamlike as I say, albeit with both a constant uncanniness and splashes of nightmare. It is one that, for many will be too empty, its length causing the dreamlike quality to feel stretched, but it is haunting, with imagery that stays with the viewer and that, for some, will prove to be magnetic. It is certainly not a casual watch.

one of the bandaged ones

The vampirism is not explained. These suffering from it, in the main part, seem ill, almost decaying with their open sores and swaddled in bandages. As mentioned only a couple of them have the light/white eyes – though we see them spread to another with a kiss. They are not immortal, we see one die, and I wonder whether the villagers who died would actually have become restless or whether that is a projection. There is certainly no indication that the foreigner we see die subsequently rises again and Giacomo sees the old woman’s spirit divorced from her mortal remains before her staking. For a film that has little dialogue this says much that raises questions within the viewer and keeps one thinking about the film after the fact. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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