Women attending therapy in the Canadian Rockies are being stalked by a mysterious entity.
Confronting trauma is a condition sine qua non horror cinema. These inner evils become the metaphor of monsters that express themselves in everyday life. We just have to remember the classic Don’t Look Nowby Nicolas Roeg, and, more recently, Menby Alex Garland.
The peculiarity of Dark Nature (wild terror), presented at Fantasia last summer, is to take place outdoors and bring together a group of women who try to fight their fears. What better than sorority and resilience to break isolation and face the sleeping demons that symbolize domestic violence or post-traumatic stress?
However, this potential is never well exploited in this first feature film written and directed by Métis filmmaker Berkley Brady. From the survival story to the deliverance (the reference on the subject), the result follows marked paths, wanting to be verbose and superficial in its way of exposing the suffering of its beings.
The whole looks above all too much like a pale copy of The Descent, a cult work by Neil Marshall, minus the twisted finale. The way the characters deal with the wilderness is similar, as is this beast that lurks in the shadows.
Except that in terms of gore and chills, there’s not much to get your teeth into. The use of hallucinations is intended to be quickly repetitive, while the gratuitous bursts leave people indifferent. When the tension appears during the final confrontation, it is already too late.
This is all the more unfortunate since the director displays a certain talent for taking care of her atmosphere and her atmosphere. Its photography makes good use of the wide open spaces, Ghostkeeper’s music easily titillates the senses, and there’s clever use of sound effects.
All this remains in vain as the demonstration runs on empty. It is like the performance of the actresses, more convinced than convincing, except that of the heroine camped by Hannah Emily Anderson. When you come out of a genre film more bored than traumatized, it’s never a good sign.
Indoors
Horror suspense
Dark Nature (VF: wild terror)
Berkley Brady
With Hannah Emily Anderson, Madison Walsh, Roseanne Supernault
1:25 a.m.