I heard this movie was kind of inspired by the modern wave of horror films like The Witch, Midsommar, and Hereditary. A series of films that have their ups and downs in my book but I respect their attempts at being more thoughtful, heady films that don’t (always) go for easy and repetitive jump scares. Sometimes the devotion to this style goes too far though.

The Dark and the Wicked is about an adult brother and sister managing the care for their dying father on his run down farm. And the little problem of the devil or a demon or a babadook or whatever lurking about making them see things for ninety minutes. The creatures dedication to simply f’ing with them is kind of impressive. Wish the leads, you know, did much of anything besides mope and look surprised every once in a while.

The film spends entirely too much time with slow, ponderous, overly deliberate scenes in between suspense that isn’t very suspenseful and scares that are hardly scary. There’s a good movie buried under the overly morose mood which only begins to poke its head out in the last twenty minutes or so (before having a thunderingly bad final jump scare). Those last twenty minutes don’t save the flick, they just remind me that too many modern horror movies would be better off as short films or part of an anthology.

It’s not an unmitigated disaster and if you have a lot of patience and somehow get into the mood the film is laying down, you might enjoy it. Or tolerate it. Or at least get something out of it. Twenty minutes of decent mood at the tail end of 90 minutes is not enough for me.

Score: 69