The Dark and the Wicked

I was excited to see Bryan Bertino's latest offering. "The Strangers" was an interesting classic introducing masked home invaders in the most unsettling of ways. "The Monster" was a better-than-expected as an estranged mother and daughter are stranded in their car in the woods while being stalked by a monster. "Wicked's" Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic score was a solid (90%/72) and user reviews were ok (3.2 on IMDB). But for me, it fell completely flat as I kept waiting for something to connect the disparate disturbing scenes and story-line together. Many movies try to tease the viewer with unreliable narrators, leaving them to ponder whether what is happening is supernatural or all in the characters head. "The Babadook," "Black Swan," and "The Lighthouse" are examples of movies that do this right. Unfortunately, this doesn't. It's clearly something supernatural that is haunting everybody but beyond some gory and violent scenes (all of which are well done), the movie is just too ambiguous in a very frustrating way.

I was excited to check out Bryan Bertino's latest offering, "The Dark and the WIcked." His debut, "The Strangers," was an instant classic introducing masked home invaders in the most unsettling of ways. His followup, "The Monster," was well-crafted as an estranged mother and daughter get stranded in their car in the woods while being stalked by a monster. It was ultimately disappointing as there was nothing to connect the disparate creepy happenings to the story-line. Many movies try to tease the viewer with unreliable narrators, leaving them to ponder whether what is happening is supernatural or all in the characters head. "The Babadook," "Black Swan," and "The Lighthouse" are examples of movies that do this right. Unfortunately, this doesn't. It's clearly something supernatural haunting everybody, but beyond some disturbing and/or violent scenes (all of which are well done), the movie is just too ambiguous in a very frustrating way.

A Scary and Heartbreaking Film Our intro is very warm and cozy with female character, and she does a proper hard days work on her property. We appear to have some happenings early off, and I'm unsure if it's a regular occurrence or something entirely different. We now have more main characters on the property, and the odd happenings are still occurring. Things have gotten ugly really fast, and we've had a truly terrible tragedy happen. Stranger and stranger, things are just getting worse, or maybe we're seeing what was always there and not talked about. Such a simple and humble life to begin, and we have such a terribly ominous aura now being felt stronger with each day. I knew when I saw that Marin Ireland is in this film that we'd be in for an emotional ride, and she isn't disappointing. It's so hard to get your footing and slow your heart with all the terror that is being unleashed, and it appears to be escalating.