Review: 'Drive-Away Dolls' is good-natured raunch, a wild throwback to the days of seedy drive-in movies

Triangulated somewhere amid the B-movie speed of Roger Corman, the exploitation raunch of Russ Meyer and the throwaway humor of “The Big Lebowski” lies “Drive-Away Dolls,” an agreeably wild bit of grindhouse fun about two gals unwittingly getting caught up with some bad dudes.

Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) are best pals, two lesbians living in Philadelphia, circa 1999. Jamie is a big-mouthed Texan whose girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), has kicked her out of their apartment after catching her with another woman. Jamie camps out with Marian, who is Jamie’s emotional opposite: Introverted, tightly wound and still nursing a torch for her ex years after their breakup.

Marian wants to get away, to go to Tallahassee, Fla., to visit her favorite aunt. Jamie suggests a fun and profitable way to get there: Get a “drive-away” job, driving a rental car after a one-way trip. Jamie calls a rental service and tells the guy, Curlie (Bill Camp), they want to drive to Tallahassee. Curlie thinks Jamie and Marian have been sent by a shadowy figure to deliver the car — and a mysterious package in the trunk – to Tallahassee. Curlie only realizes his mistake when the real drivers (C.J. Wilson and Joey Slotnick) and their minder, The Chief (Colman Domingo), show up to claim the car.

From here, Jamie and Marian head south, with Jamie trying to get Marian to loosen up — and break her sexual dry spell – at whatever lesbian bars they can find in the Deep South. At some point, they figure out that they’re being followed, and also discover exactly what they’re carrying in the trunk.

What does this have to do with a nervous guy (Pedro Pascal) we see meeting an untimely end in the first reel? Or the conservative senator (Matt Damon) whose billboard gives Jamie the creeps? Or the women’s soccer team who invite Jamie and Marian to their makeout party? Or the psychedelic interludes featuring an alluring flower child (played by someone not listed in the credits, but instantly recognizable)?

Director Ethan Coen — in the big chair for the first time without his brother Joel — creates a hilariously down and dirty movie (co-written with his editor and wife, Tricia Cooke) that draws apparent inspiration from low-rent ‘60s drive-in movies. There’s a free-wheeling feel to the whole thing, as if Coen was told he could do anything he wanted as long as he didn’t spend much money.

Qualley (“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”) and Viswanathan (“Blockers,” “The Broken Hearts Gallery”), aside from both being smokin’ hot, have great comic chemistry. Qualley’s sure-of-her-self motormouth matches nicely with Viswanathan’s clenched anger, and together they keep this occasionally unsteady narrative on the tracks.

For fans of the Coen brothers over the years, Ethan Coen’s gift for sexy silliness in “Drive-Away Dolls” is an interesting counterpoint to Joel Coen’s recent solo effort, “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Two movies could not be any more different if you tried, and the idea that most of the Coen brothers’ great works — from “Blood Simple” to “Raising Arizona” to “Fargo” to “No Country for Old Men” — is just a result of them meeting in the middle is mind-boggling.

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‘Drive-Away Dolls’

★★★

Opens Friday, February 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for crude sexual content, full nudity, language and some violent content. Running time: 84 minutes.

Review: 'Perfect Days' is an almost perfect movie, as Wim Wenders examines the little moments that make life worthwhile

At 78, the German-born director Wim Wenders doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone — which makes the quiet magic of “Perfect Days” (which is up for an Oscar in the International Film category) even more impressive.

The movie, which Wenders filmed in Tokyo with a Japanese cast, is a moving consideration of the little joys of life — the beauty we miss because we’re not looking for it. That’s the sort of description that some will see as a red flag, a sign that there’s not really a plot here. There is, but not in the way you might think.

The movie starts as Hirayama (played by Koji Yakusho, from “Tampopo” and “Babel”) wakes up in his small Tokyo apartment to the sound of his neighbor sweeping in front of their building. He gets up, folds up his bedding, waters his plants, puts on his work uniform, goes downstairs and out the door, gets a canned coffee from the vending machine, and gets in his van. He picks out a cassette to listen to on the drive, providing some delightful needle drops that include The Animals “House of the Rising Sun,” Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay” and, yes, Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” 

Hirayama’s job is to clean public toilets in Tokyo’s city parks. He has a route of a dozen or so facilities, a steady routine of how to clean them — pick up the trash, wipe down the sinks, scrub the toilets, and so on — before going to the next one. Sometimes he has an assistant, Takashi (Tokio Emoto), who’s more focused on his phone than his work.

Through the day, Hirayama is smiling. He doesn’t smile because he’s a fool, or looking with bitter irony at the passing parade of shallow people. He smiles out of contentment, because he enjoys going through his life being useful and accomplishing something. He doesn’t even show irritation when he finds a lost child in one of his toilet facilities, and when he reunites the boy with his mother, the mom’s first reaction is to get a wet wipe for the hand the child was using to hold Hirayama’s hand.

When work is done, Hirayama begins another routine. He rides his bike. He goes to the public baths to wash off the day. He goes to an eatery, where the waiter always greets him with a glass of ice water. He has dinner, then goes back to his apartment, lays out his mat, reads a little William Faulkner, and goes to bed. 

The next day starts the same, and so do several days after that. But the days are not identical. One day, Takashi’s punkish girlfriend, Aya (Aoi Yamada), rides in the janitorial fan with them and gets interested in Hirayama’s cassettes. (She’s got good taste — she picks Patti Smith’s “Horses.”) Another day is Hirayama’s day off, so we see him doing laundry, buying a paperback to replace the Faulkner, and collecting the prints from a roll of film with images of the trees he sees during his lunch break.

The closest thing Wenders and co-writer Takuma Takasaki get to a summation, or a declaration of Hirayama’s philosophy, comes when he’s visited by his teen niece, Niko (Arisa Nakano). They’re riding their bikes over a bridge, and Niko wants to follow the river to the ocean. Hirayama says they can’t on this visit, but maybe next time. When’s that?, Niko asks. Hirayama’s reply: “Next time is next time. Now is now.”

The moviegoer gets to experience the “now” of Hirayama’s life, to appreciate the small moments of him enjoying his life. And we get to watch Yakusho, in a performance that’s as brilliant as it subtle, find the emotional gems of his character’s existence. (We also get to see a dazzling array of architecturally stunning public bathrooms, which Tokyo residents keep quite clean.) 

And while “Perfect Days” isn’t driven by its plot, but that doesn’t mean there’s a down stretch or a wasted move. It’s a movie about the importance of little moments — and a movie that’s full of such little moments, every one of which is a reward.

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‘Perfect Days’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 23, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated PG for some language, partial nudity and smoking. Running time: 123 minutes; in Japanese with subtitles.

Review: 'Ordinary Angels' is a story of grief and grace that feels contrived even though it's based on a true story

A title card in the opening moments of “Ordinary Angels” informs audiences that it’s based on a true story — which turns out to be unnecessary, and beside the point. 

In a movie like this — a four-hankie story of a taciturn widower, his medically imperiled daughter, and the stranger who takes up their cause — you expect it to be a true story, because the narrative is too implausible to be anything else. That still doesn’t make the drama any easier to swallow.

The story starts with that stranger, Sharon Stevens (Hilary Swank), a hair stylist in Louisville, Kentucky, whose main extracurricular activity is being a lively drunk at the bar — and then relying on her best friend and business partner, Rose (Tamala Jones), getting her home. When we see this happen for what must be the umpteenth time, judging from Rose’s exasperation, the morning after includes Rose dragging Sharon to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

It’s when Sharon leaves that meeting, and buys some beer, that she sees a newspaper story about the Schmitt family. Ed Schmitt (Alan Ritchson, the star of “Reacher”) is a roofer dealing with a double tragedy: His wife, Theresa (Amy Acker), recently died, leaving Ed to care for his daughters Ashley (Skywalker Hughes), age 8, and Michelle (Emily Mitchell), who’s 5 and needs a liver transplant. Sharon thinks she can be helpful, so she passes around the tip jar at the hair salon, and gives a few hundred dollars to Ed and his mom, Barbara (Nancy Travis).

But Sharon, a brash woman who never takes “no” for an answer, isn’t done. She applies her business smarts to getting Ed’s finances organized — and working to drive down the hundreds of thousands of debts accrued by Theresa’s long illness. Ed, while appreciative, starts to feel both overwhelmed by Sharon’s bigger-than-life personality and a little angry that this stranger has inserted herself into his life.

Director Jon Gunn cut his teeth in the faith-centered films of the Irwin brothers (his screenwriting credits include “I Still Believe,” the Kurt Warner biopic “American Underdog” and “Jesus Revolution”). This movie isn’t as overtly religious — there are discussions of God and faith, and the Schmitt family minister (Drew Powell) is featured — and more centered on the power of community to come together in a crisis.

The script, credited to Meg Tilly (yes, the actor from “The Big Chill”) and Kelly Fremon Craig (“Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.”), stays largely free of treacly sentimentality for a surprising amount of time. The focus is on the human drama, of Ed struggling to accept help and Sharon realizing that her campaign to assist the Schmitts is deflecting from working on her own problems. 

In the big finale, all the restraint goes out the window. It’s an all-hands-on-deck effort to get Michelle to her transplant during a massive snowstorm — and even though it all happened (as evidenced by the obligatory real footage during the closing credits), it feels phony and contrived. “Ordinary Angels” is proof that events that are real don’t necessarily feel real when put up on screen, and that can make all the difference.

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‘Ordinary Angels’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, February 23, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for thematic content, brief bloody images and smoking. Running time: 117 minutes.

Review: The 15 short films up for Oscar are, as always, a wildly diverse collection of stories with some genuine standouts.

The all-you-can-eat buffet of the short films nominated for Academy Awards — five each in three categories: Live-action, animated and documentary — gives moviegoers a reminder that not all stories take 90 minutes or three hours to tell.

The live-action program is dominated by one 40-minute film: Wes Anderson’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” which may deliver the most Anderson-style whimsy in the shortest amount of time possible. (If you want more of the same, Anderson made three other shorts based on Dahl stories, and all four of them are streaming on Netflix, though you have to dig for them.) 

The story goes through narrators like Russian nesting dolls: First Ralph Fiennes as Dahl, recounting the life of idle rich man Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch), who tells of a story he learned of a doctor (Dev Patel), and the doctor’s account of a man in India (Ben Kingsley) who trained himself to see without his eyes. It’s charming, with rapid-fire narration, deadpan performances and Anderson’s gift for perfectly composed tableaux.

And although “Henry Sugar” is the favorite to win the category, that’s not the film in this category that tugs hardest at the heart strings. That race is a dead heat between two stories about the after-effects of violence: Director Misan Harriman’s “The After,” starring David Oyelowo as a London man who loses everything dear to him in a random attack, and director Nazrin Chadhoury’s “Red, White and Blue,” with Brittany Snow as a single mom dealing with the reality of trying to obtain an abortion in red-state America.

The other two live-action nominees, also worthwhile, are: “Knight of Fortune,” a droll comedy from Denmark about grief, and “Invincible,” a dark drama from Quebec about a troubled teen in juvenile detention. 

Among the animated films in competition, I have to admit a personal bias toward “Ninety-Five Senses,” because I know the filmmakers, Jared and Jerusha Hess, the Utah husband-and-wife team behind “Napoleon Dynamite.” The movie, produced by the Salt Lake Film Society’s MAST filmmakers’ incubator program, depicts an old man (voiced by Tim Blake Nelson) describing the five senses. The story has a brutal twist in the middle, and goes down some dark and fascinating roads.

Also quite effective is director Tal Kantor’s “Letter to a Pig,” a French/Israeli production in which a Holocaust survivor tells his story to a high-school class, where one girl’s imagination gets swept up in his horrific tale. 

The remainder of the animated program, all good: The Iranian “Our Uniform,” which uses fabric to reminisce about the filmmaker’s hijab-wearing school years; the French “Pachyderme,” a remembrance of a girl’s childhood visits to her grandparents’ lakeside cottage; and “War Is Over!,” a World War I allegory featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Christmas (War Is Over).”

(Shorts International, the company that distributes the Oscar shorts programs, has added two more animated shorts to fill out the program — since the five nominees run about an hour in total.)

The documentary program isn’t quite as good as the other two compilations, but there are some gems.

My favorite is “Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó,” in which director Sean Wang interviews his Taiwan-born grandmothers — ages 94 and 83 — who live together in the Bay Area. (Wang cast one of them as his fictional grandmother in his narrative film “Di Di,” which won the Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.)

For filmmaking prowess, the best may be “The Last Repair Shop,” directed by Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, which tells the stories of the people who work for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s music department — lovingly fixing instruments used by students who otherwise couldn’t afford them. The camerawork is lush, and the movie ends with a musical interlude that’s simply beautiful.

Nearly as compelling is “The Barber of Little Rock,” in which directors John Hoffman and Christine Turner follow Arlo Washington, a financier and activist working to bring economic opportunity — and economic justice — to the underserved parts of Arkansas’ state capital.

S. Leo Chiang’s fascinating “Island In Between” makes the political personal and vice versa, as he goes back to his native Taiwan — and, in particular, the island of Kinmen, which is physically closer to mainland China but politically and emotionally linked to Taiwan. 

The favorite to win the category is also, to me, the weakest of the five. In “The ABC’s of Book Banning,”director Sheila Nevins (the longtime head of HBO’s documentary department) talks to Florida school kids about the books that have been banned, restricted or challenged across the country. Nevins also talks to some of the authors whose works have been targeted, including poets Amanda Gorman and Nikki Giovanni. The urgency of the topic, and the fury audiences will surely feel about it, far outweighs the pedestrian filmmaking. 

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Academy Award-nominated live-action short films

★★★1/2

Academy Award-nominated animated short films

★★★1/2

Academy Award-nominated documentary short films

★★★

The animated and live-action programs open Friday, February 16, and the documentary program opens Friday, February 23, all at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Not rated; the live-action program is probably R for scenes of violence; the animated is probably PG-13 for stylized depictions of violence; the documentary program is probably PG-13 for thematic content. Running time: The live-action program is 140 minutes, with one short in Danish and one in French, both with subtitles; the animated program is 80 minutes, with one short in French and Hebrew, one in Farsi, and one in French, all with subtitles; and the documentary program is 140 minutes, with two shorts in Chinese, both with subtitles.

Review: 'The Taste of Things' is a multi-course meal for the senses, capturing the beauty of food and Juliette Binoche

Food and film are love languages in “The Taste of Things,” a French romance expressed most passionately and sensually when its lead actors strap on their aprons and start literally cooking.

Dodin Bouffant (played by Benoit Magimel) is a famed restaurateur in France, circa 1885. His secret weapon is his chef, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), who may be the finest cook in the country.

Eugénie, for reasons known only to herself, never chose to exploit those gifts by going to Paris and becoming famous cooking for the crowned heads of Europe. She has enjoyed applying her gifts in Dodin’s kitchen, working with him on exquisite dishes and gently rebuffing his occasional marriage proposals. Sure, they would sometimes share nights of passion (this is France, after all), but their real romance was by the stove.

Writer-director Tran Anh Hung — a Vietnamese-born filmmaker who explored similar foodie pleasures in his 1993 film “The Scent of Green Papaya” — captures Eugénie at work one summer day, preparing a multi-course meal for Dodin and his gourmet colleagues. The colleagues are important, because it’s through their rapturous descriptions we understand how good Eugénie’s dishes are when we can’t taste them ourselves. They are so captivating to the eye, thanks to Tran’s direction and Jonathan Ricquebourg’s sumptuous cinematography, that we would be surprised if they didn’t hit the nose and tongue just as pleasingly.

The real action, though, is watching Eugénie working her magic. She knows exactly which pot to put on the stove, what vegetables should be chopped, and when to put in the roast. Sometimes, Dodin comes in to assist, and they move together like well-choreographed figure skaters, each one anticipating the other’s moves and matching them adeptly. When they speak, it’s usually to pass on information to Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), a 14-year-old girl who’s in training to be Eugénie’s assistant.

The chemistry between Binoche and Magimel is delicious. This is in part because Binoche could look lovingly and generously at a potted plant and you’d believe it to be true love. It may be also that the two actors were lovers a quarter-century ago — their relationship lasted five years, and produced a daughter, now 24. Whatever the formula, it works because the actors play characters who don’t talk about love as much as they show it, with every turning of the spatula and flick of the whisk. 

“The Taste of Things” is a movie meant to make you fall in love — with the food, with the stars, with the French countryside — and it succeeds beautifully.

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‘The Taste of Things’

★★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, February 14, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City) and Century 16 (South Salt Lake). Rated PG-13 for some sensuality, partial nudity and smoking. Running time: 135 minutes.

Review: 'Bob Marley: One Love' barely scratches the surface of the reggae legend's fascinating life

If you know nothing about Bob Marley, the legendary reggae musician and Jamaican activist, the biographical drama “Bob Marley: One Love” will teach you that much and maybe a few timeline details — but anyone with knowledge of Marley’s complicated life will feel like major sections are glossed over.

The movie primarily centers on the last five years of Marley’s life, from 1976 to 1981 — with abundant flashbacks to his childhood. The main story starts with Marley (played by Kingsley Ben-Adir) planning a concert, called “Smile Jamaica,” designed to be a respite from the bitter and often political campaign at the time. Both sides viewed Marley and the concert with suspicion, each thinking Marley supports the other.

Two days before the show, gunmen — to this day, it’s never been determined whose side they were on — snuck into Marley’s Kingston home and started shooting. Marley was grazed by a couple of bullets, his wife Rita (Lashana Lynch) was shot in the head but survived (a doctor explains that her dreadlocks kept the bullet from reaching her brain), and his manager, Don Taylor (), took six bullets and survived. Bob and Rita performed at “Smile Jamaica” as scheduled.

The violence, however, left its mark on the Marley family, and they fled Jamaica. Rita took the kids to stay with family in Delaware, while Bob and some of his band, The Wailers, relocated to London, where the head of Island Records, Chris Blackwell (James Norton), set them up in a studio. It’s there that Marley experimented with British rock, blues and soul, bending them to accompany his reggae sounds to create what some consider his greatest album, “Exodus.”

Four writers are credited with the screenplay — Terence Winter (“The Wolf of Wall Street”) and Frank E. Flowers (“Metro Manila”) in one pairing, Zach Baylin and director Reinaldo Marcus Green (who collaborated on “King Richard”) in another. The script drops little trivia bombs along the way, with such minutiae as the Island Records marketing guy (Michael Gandolfini) objecting to the album cover of “Exodus,” because Marley’s face wasn’t on it. 

The deep stuff about Marley’s relationship with Rita? Even in the one major argument we’re shown, we barely scratch the surface of the tensions within the marriage. (A salient fact not mentioned in the film: Of the Marleys’ 11 children, six of them were born to women outside the marriage.) Before the movie gets too close to anything uncomfortable or less than legendary about Marley, someone notices the bloody mess in his toe — the first hint of the melanoma that took his life in 1981.

This is the third straight biopic Green has directed — “King Richard,” with Will Smith as Venus and Serena Williams’ dad, and “Joe Bell,” starring Mark Wahlberg as a guilt-ridden dad walking across the country, were the others — and maybe he should stop for awhile. He certainly should, before making another biography of a musician, watch the 2007 spoof “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” as a reminder not to step into every cliche in the genre as he does here.

Whatever is worth preserving in “Bob Marley: One Love” comes from the performances, both acting and musical. Ben-Adir, whose resume includes playing Malcolm X (in “One Night in Miami…”) and a Ken (in “Barbie”), finds Bob Marley’s questing spirit, and Lynch (“Captain Marvel,” “The Woman King”) shows Rita to be his rock and consigliere. And the music — sometimes sung by Ben-Adir, but usually Marley’s originals — is untouchable.

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‘Bob Marley: One Love’

★★

Opens Wednesday, February 14, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for marijuana use and smoking throughout, some violence and brief strong language. Running time: 104 minutes.

Review: 'Suncoast' uses a national story as backdrop for a rich coming-of-age drama about a teen girl learning about love and grief

Writer-director Laura Chinn mines her family’s tragedy in the tragicomedy “Suncoast,” and strikes dramatic gold with this heartbreaking story of a teen coping with impending grief on the outskirts of a national controversy.

Nico Parker stars as Doris, a 17-year-old girl living in Clearwater, Fla., circa 2005, with her abrasively forward mother (Laura Linney) and her older brother, Max (Cree Kawa) — who is bedridden and mostly unresponsive, after years of brain cancer. It’s reached the point where Max is near death and needs hospice care to see him comfortably to the end.

Mom, convinced that the hospice nurses aren’t doing enough for Max, decides to sleep on a cot alongside her son. This leaves Doris alone at home — which turns out to be an opportunity for her to host parties and make instant friends with the popular girls at school. It also puts Doris on the radar of Nate (Amarr), one of her school’s cutest boys.

Doris also sees what’s going on outside the hospice: Hundreds of Christian protesters, demanding that another patient in the hospice — Terri Schiavo — not have her feeding tube removed, as per her husband’s wishes. (True story: Chinn’s brother was at the same hospice as Schiavo, whose case became a cause celebre for the religious right, a political football for both George W. and Jeb Bush, and a case study of conservatives being quite happy with government meddling in private medical decisions.) 

Doris befriends one protester, a widower named Paul (played by Woody Harrelson), who’s a more empathetic character than the shorthand view of protesters might lead one to expect.

That’s one of the beauties of Chinn’s film, is that she doesn’t depict anyone as cardboard stereotypes. Mom is overbearing, but also deeply caring and wracked with self-doubt. Doris’ high school friends (Daniella Taylor, Ella Anderson and Ariel Martin) are shallow and occasionally clueless, but they’re also supportive and caring. And Doris herself is sometimes thoughtful and wise, other times self-centered and self-pitying.

Linney gives a powerhouse performance as Doris and Max’s mom, who’s been fighting for her kids for so long she has trouble accepting that she’s at the point where she has to let both of them go — one to her independence, the other to his long-expected death.

Young Parker — who five year ago made her movie debut as Colin Farrell’s daughter in Tim Burton’s “Dumbo” — gives a star-making performance. (It’s in her blood: Her mom is Thandiwe Newton, and her dad is the director Ol Parker.) She captures Doris’ anger at her mom, grief over her brother, and her first faltering steps toward adulthood. At 19, Parker shows in “Suncoast” she has a bright future ahead. 

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‘Suncoast’

★★★★

Streaming starting Friday, February 9, on Hulu. Rated R for teen drug and alcohol use, language and some sexual references. Running time: 109 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this website on January 21, when the movie premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

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.