Vamp or Not? The Dark

This is a 2018 film directed by Justin P. Lange and when I read its blurb it was suggested that it was The Lovely Bones meets Let the Right One In and whilst I haven’t seen the former, the latter drew my attention right away.

It is, as we will see, a film featuring a form of undead, but is that undead a vampire? That’s what we are here to find out.

So, the film starts with a road through the woods and, eventually, a car driving along it. The car stops at a gas station and the driver Josef (Karl Markovics) goes in and picks an armful of groceries. He goes to the register where the gas station owner has been stood, looking curiously at him. He takes a map, but the man says he’ll have to pay – something Josef confirms he’ll do. Then the man circles an area called Devil’s Den and says that it is what he’s looking for and then berates him for going there and suggesting that no good will happen there.

looking for inspiration

Suddenly the TV behind the counter mentions a manhunt and reward for the capture of an armed and dangerous fugitive. Josef’s face appears on the screen, a gun appears in his hand and he shoots the owner. He heads back to the car, clumsily dropping the gun at one point and having to pick it up, and drives off. After a while he stops – he’s left the map. He prays in German, looks up and sees he has stopped by a forest trail with a sign, “Devil’s Den”.

entering Devil's Den

He drives the path but blows a tyre, on inspection he sees he’s gone over a caltrop. The car limps along until he reaches a house. He goes out and tries the door, it is locked, but as he peers through a window the door opens as if under its own agency. The house is long abandoned but we notice the bath is full of clothes that have been shredded and the only room that looks used recently is a bedroom with dark themed drawings on the walls, and a bed with a teddy – clearly once a child’s room. Josef lies on the bed when he hears a knocking and notices a peep hole in the wall. He looks through and sees an eye. He falls backwards, discharging his gun as an axe breaches the wall from the other side.

Nadia Alexander as Mina

He runs but the door he got in through is now locked. He gets out through a utility area but stands on a piece of wood with nails deliberately embedded in it. A hooded figure, Mina (Nadia Alexander), carrying an axe, comes after him. He hides behind a tree, clutching a rock, but she appears to have lost him. Then he realises she is above him, on a branch, as the axe swings down. The film does not address how the door locked and unlocked (was it her, or a more non-corporeal supernatural agency?) nor how she silently got above him on the tree – we see some tree climbing later but this seemed particularly preternatural.

blood at mouth

She starts feeding on the body back at the house – so she has a strength (in that she could manhandle a full-grown man’s corpse despite the fact that she is a young teen). She looks pretty darn zombie, one eye (at least) milky, the skin drawn taught over her skull, old wounds forever etched in her flesh. In fact, my first thought (though the movie doesn’t mention it) was revenant. She gets in the car and tries the cereal that Josef bought but cannot stomach it. Suddenly there is movement in the back of the car. Under a cover is a young boy, Alex (Toby Nichols), and he has a mass of scars where his eyes should be.

Toby Nichols as Alex

For some reason Mina cannot bring herself to attack the boy – she tells him that Josef has gone and when he touches her hand he says that she should wear warmer clothes as the hand is freezing. The film then follows the two as the search for Alex draws in on them. We discover that he was abducted by Josef, abused physically (indeed his eyes are gone because he did not follow the rules and it seems Josef burnt them out) and is essentially very broken. Mina, of course, is broken too.

abuse

We get her story in flashbacks. We get a shorthand intimation that her father was dead, her mother’s new boyfriend was sexually abusing her and killed her when she fought back. He buried her in the woods but she came back (killing her mother as her first act). There is no explanation as to why – she suggests that the woods are cursed and its as good a rationale as anything – I did notice that her nails were long and sharp. So what is she?

corpse-like

As zombie as she looks, zombies tend to be locked in their corpse-like physical appearance – the fact that her nails grew into weapons is not particularly zombie (though her relationship with Alex will also have a physical impact ala Warm Bodies). She was raised from the grave, intimated in the narrative for the purpose of getting revenge on her murderer and drunken mother, but we are not told how this occurred and she has essentially just stuck around eating folk. That said she is intelligent (she set traps to take out cars and to stop people escaping) and can speak. She has been the same for a while – a person in the woods suggests that Mina went missing when he was a kid – but has kept up to date with things, she can use a smartphone she steals.

in the mirror

There is a moment with a dog (brought by a search party) where she growls at it and scares it off – but it is causing the animal to fear her, not controlling it. The film deliberately shows us her in a mirror and tracing the cross on Josef’s lighter. I think my gut reaction of revenant was on the money – but the movie never mentions that word and, if so, she is a revenant that consumes flesh. We don’t know if she needs to, but she certainly wants to (and with gusto, as she tucks into Josef she belches). I am also tempted to suggest that calling her Mina is a clue, after all the famous Mina is in Dracula.There is probably an argument for zompire, revenant or (with a more folklorish look) vampire. It is definitely of genre interest at the very least but I’m happy to list it. The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon UK