dark light [2019]

thumbing thru netflix last night looking for a movie to watch i find this flick in a couple of categories.  sci fi & action, i think.  the thumbnail of a blond woman in a corn field with the brief description of the plot that details the woman's daughter disappears from her bedroom had me thinking this is a ufo abduction story.  wrong.  it is the tale of a newly divorced young mother who returns to her childhood home in the country with her young daughter.  the dark light of the title references creatures who live under the house & in the adjacent corn field.  these monsters have a big flashlight for their eyes.  hence, their dark light. 

i knew i was in for some serious cheese to go along with all that corn.  still, the movie is better than the reviews it got.  jessica madsen, an actor previously unknown to me, plays annie knox, the young mother.  her daughter, emily, played by opal littleton, is a 10 year old coping with the trauma of her parents' recent divorce.  annie's ex, paul, played by ed brody, is a decent man who is doing his best to cope with his new life too.

soon the creatures make their presence known.  first by scratching between the walls, then by closing & opening doors, then by their klieg lights blazing in the nearby crop.  the monster design is not bad either if not very original.  soon, the object of their affections is young emily.  after a few jump scares emily is taken.  no one believes annie, especially after accidently firing her shotgun into the shoulder of paul.  the police take annie into custody.  she is charged with the murder of her daughter.

the plot flirts with annie's tipping over into madness.  yet, it is clear by all evidence given that the creatures are real & not the hallucinations of a young mother's mental illness.  a few rather large gaping plots holes remain & the timeline of the events grows a little fuzzy.  especially, when annie seeks the help of a cryptid specialist who has a hypothesis about these dark light monsters.  the less said about that sidetrack the better.  still, annie is a driven & solid personality very well essayed by madsen.  indeed, madsen's set expressions are pretty damn charismatic.  i believed her as a young mother tormented & determined to find & save her little girl.

the filmmaker, who both directed & wrote this pic, padraig reynolds, is pretty well schooled in fright flix.  he does a good job at building tension & framing his scares.  sure, the dark light creatures look a bit silly once they are fully visible.  but the moments when we find evidence of their being based on their massive eye light, such as when annie sees the lights in her corn field, is pretty damn effective.  

shot in tblisi, georgia, standing in for, well, i don't know, we are never told where this place is, but i think it is meant to be a part of the u.s. south?, the production is lean but the countryside is pretty.  a nice contrast to the menace inside & outside annie's childhood home.  the script is weak but the direction & photography are fairly solid.  but it was madsen who carried this movie & the reason why i continued with it until the very bitter end.  she is a solid, charismatic presence onscreen.  as for the creatures, i kept thinking, get a few scientists on the scene, will ya!  a new breed of humanoid apex predator is worthy of study & preservation, not fear!