This was a recommendation from our cinephile friend who probably likes dark movies a little more than is healthy. It does have a decently high Rotten Tomatoes rating and it starts with some promise as it seems to have been made with decent production values. But ultimately I did not like it at all, finding it a shallow film that is interested in little more than stringing together a succession of scary images and makes no effort whatsoever to impart any deeper context or meaning.

Siblings Louise and Michael return to their family farm as their father is unconscious and dying. Their mother however is dismayed that they have come and keeps repeating that she has told them to stay away. One night while chopping vegetables, she moves on to chopping up her own fingers. The next morning, the siblings discover her hung to death from the rafters of the barn. They are disturbed by what is going on and Louise later find their mother’s diary which is full of rants about the devil wanted to take her husband’s soul. Both of them are haunted by horrifying sights such as Michael seeing their mother outside the house calling for him and Louise seeing their father out and about even though he is supposed to bedridden. They discuss fleeing the house, taking their father to the hospital but the doctor they call for denies them, saying that he wouldn’t survive the trip. They are also visited by a priest who claims that he frequently called on their mother though they insist that their family isn’t religious and their parents never believed in God.

As I noted, this film seems promising at first with a strong sense of place as it’s set on a farm with seemingly solid, down to earth characters. But it very quickly reveals itself to be shallow with the setup serving only as a vehicle to deliver scary images. The film doesn’t even have the decency to be original in its imagery, it’s standard tropes all the way: empty, glassy eyes, bloated stomachs, jump scares, blood streaks, insects coming out orifices and evil trash talking. The film isn’t entirely consistent in its portrayal of what this specific instance of the supernatural is capable of but the cryptozoologist in me observes that whatever it is specializes in illusions. It primary vector of causing harm is to drive the victim to commit suicide by endlessly repeating hateful and evil lies though I can’t rule out some aspect of mind or emotion control. It’s unfortunate that the two characters seem to be tricked by the illusions over and over again, not realizing that the people they are speaking to aren’t who they claim to be. It’s also ridiculous that they don’t call for help. Certainly if dozens of sheep on your farm are killed overnight in an extremely gruesome way, the government would want to know about it and find out what is going on.

Many horror movies indeed have problems in establishing some kind of backstory or explanation for the supernatural phenomena that seems halfway reasonable. The Dark and the Wicked therefore dispenses with any kind of backstory at all. We never even get to know what illness their father has. The film uses a song mentioning Jesus as kind of leitmotif but there’s no clue about where it comes from or what it means. There’s a hint of a wider plot when Louise calls a phone number she was given but it doesn’t really go anywhere. With no emotional rapport with any of the characters, there’s no horror at all when bad things happen to them. Indeed, with the way the film keeps drawing from imagery familiar from older horror movies, it starts feeling like something of a parody instead of a serious attempt at horror.

So that’s a solid thumbs-down on this one. Very often independent films can surprise us with new ideas despite their low budget but this one combines a low budget with rehashing old horror tropes and there’s nothing interesting about that at all.