A Dark Song - Review

This is a punishingly intense film about the occult. The debut feature by writer/director Liam Gavin, it's set in an isolated house in Wales where two people spend months occupied with complex rituals. A bereaved mother seeks to contact her dead child, via angelic intercession. But purity is essential to success, and neither the magician nor his sponsor are pure in spirit. The demons are never far away...

Ironic that I watched this during lockdown as the drawn-out, tedious nature of 'real' magic is central to the film's power. There is nothing glamorous about magic, here, and much that is vile and grubby and petty. Joseph Solomon (the excellent Steve Oram) convinces as an occultist thoroughly sick of his strange trade and longing to become 'invisible' to a higher reality he can't bear to keep facing. Like Solomon, Sophia (an amazing performance by Catherine Walker) is damaged and not at first very sympathetic. But as their personal demons gave way to the genuine article, I came to care about them enough to be disturbed by what happens as the ritual proceeds.

This film deserved an extra star at the very least, and it's low profile does not reflect well on horror movie fans. This is supernatural fiction that draws on the world known to Machen, Blackwood, and Monty James - they all had different views of it, but all would recognise much of the texts and invocations, I suspect. It's as if The Devil Rides Out had been remade as a gritty thriller by someone who knew his Testament of Solomon from his Kabbalah.

Recommended. But not for the faint-hearted or easily shocked.