Review: 'Out of Darkness' is a Stone Age horror thriller that's a smartly paced morality tale
If Rod Serling were alive today, and tasked with writing a script set in the Stone Age, he would probably deliver something like “Out of Darkness,” a tight little suspense thriller about finding the monster in the woods and within ourselves.
Director Andrew Cumming’s view rests on a small yellow dot in the middle of inky blackness. As the camera comes closer, we see that the yellow mass is a campfire, and a group of six, roughly clad in furs, is sitting around that fire, trying to stay warm. A title card tells us what we’re seeing happened 45,000 years ago.
The six people around this fire are led by Adem (Chuku Modu), the strongest of the group. With him are his son, Heron (Luna Mwezi), who’s about 12, and Adem’s mate, Ave (Iola Evans), who’s carrying his child. Also in the group: Geirr (Kit Young), Adam’s younger brother; Odal (Arno Lüning), an older man who’s Adem’s confidant; and Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), an orphaned teen girl.
There’s someone else in this story, but these travelers don’t know who or what they are. They’re unknown — and for these prehistoric hunter-gatherers, the unknown is scary.
When Adem is leading the group toward the nearby mountains, a three-day journey, they set up camp one night in an area Odal warns is too exposed. Adem doesn’t heed Odal’s advice, which he regrets when Heron is snatched away in the dark. Adem leads the others in a chase, into the deep woods — where the darkness and terrors become even more pronounced.
As first-time screenwriter Ruth Greenberg’s simple script tells it, these unknown beings are creating fear within the group — and that fear, as Serling told us in so many “Twilight Zone” episodes, is more destructive than anything going on outside. Meanwhile, Beyah must contend with another terror: Her first menstrual cycle, and how Adem as leader may now claim her to create another heir.
Cumming establishes the harsh realities of this Stone Age life, as these creatures make arrowheads and spear points by the fire and trudge across the wind-swept fields. (The movie was filmed in a seemingly remote part of Scotland.) The actors even talk in a porto-European language, created specifically for the film.
Cumming orchestrates the tension well, with a strong assist from cinematographer Ben Fordesman, who deftly captures the menacing shadows and brooding dark. “Out of Darkness” isn’t a complicated movie, but it gets its point across smartly.
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‘Out of Darkness’
★★★
Opens Friday, February 9, in theaters. Rated R for violence and some grisly images. Running time: 88 minutes; in an invented language, Tola, with subtitles.