A Dark Song
Sophia, in the deepest despair of grief over her lost child, takes the extreme measure of spending her life savings on a magic ritual to be able to speak to whom she lost. She rents a country home and hires the very reluctant Joseph to seal them inside and perform a ritual which will take a minimum of six months to complete. Once in the house, they begin a series of grueling rituals, starvation, sleep deprivation, borderline tortures, and even some sexual rites. Soon, Sophia begins to experience supernatural phenomena that may or may not be happening. Is the ritual real or a con? Both of them are harboring secrets and the deeper they go, the more dangerous it becomes.
Dark Song is a perfect, slow burn, spine-tingler. Anchored by two incredible leads and without extensive special effects or jump scares, the film builds tension scene by scene till it reaches a boiling point. Sophia and Joseph are locked in a game of faith; pushing each other further and further. There are so many layers of mystery in play that the central question is not whether it’s real or not, but to what extent anything we see is real. The very nature of reality is questioned in this brilliant and gripping story that kept me in rapt attention till the very end. Writer/Director Liam Gavin shows an incredible mastery of tension and creeping dread in this, his first feature film.
Adam Ruhl is a writer and life long Cinephile. He is the Executive
Cinema Editor of Pop Culture Beast’s Austin branch; covering festivals,
conventions, and new releases. When not filing reports, Adam can be
found stalking Alamo Drafthouse Programmers for leads on upcoming
DrafthouseFilms titles. Adam once blocked Harry Knowles entrance to a
theater until he was given extra tickets to a Roman Polanski movie.