The synopsis of The Dark and the Wicked seemed rather promising on the surface. There’s a level of mystery in the idea that something evil was taking over a family during a painful time in which everyone is emotionally compromised about the impending death of a loved one. I sat down and watched it during a lengthy marathon of horror movies I had never seen. When it was over, I was lost over what I was supposed to feel—it certainly wasn’t satisfaction.

Pros

Less than two hours long
Occasional creepy or gruesome moments here and there
Decent acting

Cons

No explanation of the evil to drive the plot
Aimless plot and seemingly pointless story

Plot & Thoughts

Louise (Marin Ireland) and Michael (Michael Abbott Jr.) have returned to their parents’ ranch in Texas to help their mother (Julie Oliver-Touchstone) take care of their ailing father (Michael Zagst). Their mother seems to be grief-stricken over the situation involving her dying husband, but she is also acting strangely. She doesn’t exactly welcome her children home, for example, and is almost determined to push them away, telling them, “You shouldn’t have come.” They, of course, ignore their mother’s pleas with the intent to be responsible and help her as best they can. However, more strange things happen with their mother over the course of just a few days, and then tragedy strikes. The misery doesn’t end there, however, as the two of them start to see horrific visions, including people who are dead, and something evil starts haunting them.

I won’t spoil the events of the film, but I will spoil something that does not happen to explain my main issue with the movie: The evil entity that is haunting the family is never explained in a meaningful way. I’m not saying that nothing is said about it. I’m saying that nothing substantial is ever disclosed as to what it is or why it’s haunting this family in particular. If your horror movie is dealing with something that is tangible and not supernatural, you don’t need to really explain much. In movies like Hush, in which a serial killer is stalking a deaf woman in her home, we don’t need to know his motivations to kill her or her motivations for survival. We, as the audience, understand the situation immediately because a serial killer is a concept that exists in the real world and requires no explanation to an adult. When it comes to having a horror movie with supernatural elements, however, we need more than just a character saying that there is evil afoot. There may be plenty of adults who believe ghosts or demons exist, but even they would most likely appreciate a little explanation as to why a particular family has been singled out for a haunting.

I’m not asking for a comprehensive breakdown of what it is, either. I just want some simple details that can tell me what the characters are dealing with. Take The Exorcist, for example. We never really know in that movie if the demon possessing Regan is actually “the Devil” or not, but we get hints as to what it is through the opening scene at the archeological site and we get hints as to how it came to possess her in a small scene in which a Ouija board is referenced. There is no point in The Dark and the Wicked in which something is mentioned about a curse being enacted, or a grave being disturbed, or a ritual being performed. There is no point where someone gives the characters an idea as to how to combat the entity or potentially solve their problem, either. Why did this evil decide to haunt this family? Why did it do it now? Is there a limit to its power, and can it just haunt anyone it wants? None of these questions are raised or answered, and we just have to assume this thing decided one day that it was just going to spontaneously start haunting and tormenting this family out of nowhere, and no one knows what it really is other than evil.

Aside from the lack of information about the main antagonist of the film, the other main issues I have with it are that it is dull and slow, and its characters are uninteresting. There should be enough drama between the siblings and the other characters in the film to make up for the lack of everything else with how they have to deal with what’s happening, but I never cared enough. The actors do a decent job of portraying the characters with what they have, but the script does not do enough to make them interesting. Neither of them had much of a backstory, and the dialogue they share about their past and their upbringing doesn’t give enough juicy details to flesh them out. Michael only started to get interesting to me when the movie exposed that he was concerned about his wife and daughters back home, but that aspect of his character didn’t really come out until the last act. It would have been better to have shown that he was constantly talking to his wife and how his time on the farm was putting a heavy strain on their relationship. As for Louise, she had even less to her. She is just the character who believes that there is something evil on the farm before her brother finally comes around.

The main positive I can say about The Dark and the Wicked is that it’s under two hours, so it won’t take up too much time in your day. However, the way the movie is shot and edited makes those minutes feel much longer. The story takes place over the course of a week, and it feels like you’ve spent a week watching the movie by the time it’s done. There are the occasional creepy moments scattered throughout the movie to inject some drama and horror into the experience, but it still moves so slowly that the end never feels any closer. It’s a mostly quiet and uneventful film that just made me ask the question, “Why even bother?”

TL;DR

The Dark and the Wicked seemed like a movie with promise. However, the characters are too uninteresting to carry this mostly uneventful film to its conclusion. The antagonistic force the characters are facing is too vague to be scary. All you’re left with is the occasional jump scare or creepy moment in between long stretches of blandness. It’s a relatively short movie, but it sure didn’t feel like it.

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