The Dark: Global Engagement Night

The Dark is an intriguing Austrian horror film, and was shown for Global Engagement night at Gateway Film Center on November 28, 2018. While I am usually not fond of horror related movies, The Dark presented a much deeper message that its audience could easily relate to. Most American horror movies’ main goal is to scare the audience with a suspenseful story line and no real deeper, hidden meaning; this movie, however, after the first fifteen minutes of the movie, there was less of a horrific tone and more of a love story aspect including the plot and characters. Because my knowledge of smaller, international films is very limited, it was interesting to see how the writers and directors pieced together the scenes and plots of the movie. This film was much less predictable than usual American films that follow similar blueprints for each movie. The Dark used interesting character development tools such as mystery and flashbacks to present the terrible events some face in their everyday life and the numbness and pain people feel after experiencing a traumatic event; in this case, the main character, Mena, experiences attempted rape by her mother’s boyfriend, and then is beaten to death and buried half-alive by said boyfriend.  Throughout the movie, the main character’s dreams are replaced with flashbacks of how she ended up as a zombie. I found it very interesting that they used the flashbacks as “dreams” as a metaphor for how traumatic events rob people of their happy thoughts, hopes, and dreams. People often let these events define part of their identity until they can finally cope and move on. The writers and directors of this movie created a very interesting way of implying this idea throughout the film without being explicit about the consequences of such events. The boy Mena encounters in the woods helps her to slowly heal throughout the movie. His characteristic of being blind is really important to the plot of the movie; because he’s blind, he cannot see that Mena is a zombie and does not immediately judge her. His blindness is a metaphor for being judge-free and open to caring for people who have been through these kinds of experiences. His kindness and friendship is the only kind of affection she receives for the entirety of the movie until she starts letting people back into her life when she became human again, like the women who picked her up at the end of the movie. The overall message of the movie is about healing, but the movie leaves the audience with many question regarding the characters and plot. Overall, The Dark challenges its audience to think about the deeper meaning of the movie and not simply focus on the horror related aspects. While the horrific special effects were not as good as American films usually show, it still allowed for parts of the movie to be scary, but also added comedic elements to make the tone a little lighter.

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