Dark Encounter, 2019.
Directed by Carl Strathie.
Starring Laura Fraser, Mel Raido, Vincent Regan, and Alice Lowe.
SYNOPSIS:
A year after the mysterious disappearance of an 8 year-old girl, we meet her grieving family as they return home from her memorial service in their small town. Later that evening, strange lights appear in the nearby forest and the family is exposed to an inexplicably strange phenomenon that rattles them to the core.
The second feature from writer-director Carl Strathie (Solis) is, somewhat paradoxically, a film that at once feels like it’s trying too hard and yet not quite enough. Though solidly performed and visually appealing for the most part, this collision of missing person drama and fringe sci-fi proves more clunky and unsatisfying than it does agreeably gender-bending.
In 1983 Pennsylvania, Olivia (Laura Fraser) and Ray (Mel Raido) are marking a year since the disappearance of their eight-year-old daughter, which coincides with the arrival of an otherworldly entity of unknown intent. Do the aliens mean harm? Could they be responsible for their daughter’s disappearance? Or is there another reason altogether for their presence on Earth?
Strathie’s film is certainly at its best when playing out as a straight-forward kitchen sink drama depicting how the tragedy has rocked Olivia, Ray and the wider family unit. This ultimately proves more fraught and tense than any of the subsequent sci-fi diversions, for while the squabbling itself may not be particularly remarkable, it’s fired through with gusto from the cast, especially lead Fraser, who forms a suitably rattled picture of grief throughout.
The extraterrestrial elements are meanwhile more of a mixed affair; though it does give Strathie the opportunity to deploy some neat cinematography and lighting work given the budget, it’s never particularly tense nor ventures far beyond mildly initruging. There are prolonged sequences of vague not much, and though the peripheral effects hold up relatively well, things take a duff turn when the creatures are revealed with ropey CGI work and, worse still, comically generic designs.
There’s lots of staring into the sky in this movie, but sadly little wonder – or terror. The third act feels primed to deliver a fitting payoff, but Strathie instead ambles along a ponderous path, with a dialogue-scant final reel that attempts to marry the alien invasion plot to the existential family drama with wonky results.
There are some not-terrible ideas about how to pull off a unique sci-fi film within Dark Encounter – especially pertaining to its big reveal – but it’s by-and-large suffocated underneath a tedious delivery, no matter the performances, visuals or evocative musical score.
It isn’t fun to bag on low-budget genre films that are at least trying to pull off something a little left-field, yet neither the character work nor the emotion of the piece can find reconciliation with the iffier supernatural shtick.
Though competently acted, Dark Encounter is utterly airless as a piece of extraterrestrial thriller fiction.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
