I’ll be damned. Here’s a teen-focused horror film that actually looks good. The Dark, a debut from Justin P. Lange captures strong Gothic tones with a human core, if the trailer is anything to go by. Will it devolve into over-emotional teen melodrama? Maybe, but the trailer gives me hope.
The story has a tract of woods referred to as Devil’s Den (of course) in which many a soul has entered but none have escaped alive. The story whispered among folks is that the ghost of a murdered girl haunts the woods, killing all she finds, but when one foolhardy soul wanders into the thicket, the two may discover unexpected redemption.
The synopsis sounds pretty boilerplate, but the makeup looks good, and as long as it carries a haunting tone along with enough surprises–and plenty of blood, duh–it could still make for a haunting horror.
But let’s be honest, if you have some ghost-infested woods that no one leaves alive near your home, you can just go ahead and burn that shit down pronto. Smokey the Bear would approve.
The Dark will hit theaters the weekend before Halloween on October 26, 2018.
