Into the Woods: A Creature Was Lurking in Heller’s Rudimentary Sophomore Film
If it’s nifty poetic title manages to reel you in, you’ll discover a much less memorable narrative at play in Jack Heller’s sophomore effort, Dark Was the Night (if the title sounds familiar, you may be thinking of the 2013 indie Cold Was the Night with Bryan Cranston or the gospel blues song by Blind Willie Johnson). A creature feature filled with familiar scary techniques melded to tangential familial stressors, Tyler Hisel’s screenplay (a writer making a jump from found footage to traditional thriller narratives following the South African flick Safari, 2013) feels rather primitively conceived. A mysterious, mythical beast is unleashed in the woods while the rural townsfolk become terrified as animals disappear and the body count mounts, and the unloved outsider sheriff must contend with stopping the creature from decimating a community...
If it’s nifty poetic title manages to reel you in, you’ll discover a much less memorable narrative at play in Jack Heller’s sophomore effort, Dark Was the Night (if the title sounds familiar, you may be thinking of the 2013 indie Cold Was the Night with Bryan Cranston or the gospel blues song by Blind Willie Johnson). A creature feature filled with familiar scary techniques melded to tangential familial stressors, Tyler Hisel’s screenplay (a writer making a jump from found footage to traditional thriller narratives following the South African flick Safari, 2013) feels rather primitively conceived. A mysterious, mythical beast is unleashed in the woods while the rural townsfolk become terrified as animals disappear and the body count mounts, and the unloved outsider sheriff must contend with stopping the creature from decimating a community...
- 7/23/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
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