These next two reviews are from what is typically my favorite programming block at the festival: the After Hours selection. These are the films that cinephiles will refer to as “genre.” Monsters, murderers, time travel, karate — After Hours is what I tend to build my schedule around, and rarely do I leave disappointed (although sometimes I do, as indicated by the second review in this post — it was a worthwhile gamble, though).
Never After Dark (dir. – Dave Boyle)
The title of this movie is in reference to the protagonist’s rule. She’s a traveling psychic who investigates haunted locations, working to purge them of tortured spirits. When giving her pre-ritual spiel to her latest customers, Airi (Moeka Hoshi) indicates that she only operates during the day due to the fact that the veil between our world and the afterlife is thinner at night, making her job much more dangerous. Her clients wish to watch her work, but she sends them on her way, citing safety concerns. Don’t worry, she’s not alone. Her deceased sister (Kurumi Inagaki) is in tow, appearing to her in mirrors to help her perform the ritual.
Never After Dark wastes no time getting to the goods. The pieces are in play within minutes, and the mythology is exposited in real time. We learn Airi’s methods as she performs them, while the central mystery (who is haunting this home, and why?) unfolds in compelling and unpredictable ways.
Writer/director Dave Boyle uses all of the tools at his command to generate creeping dread and shrieking scares in equal measure without telegraphing a thing, and it’s all in service of a novel and imaginative mythology that’s to good to spoil. Oftentimes films like this one hinge upon a reveal so predictable that it sinks the film (see my next review in this post), or worse yet hang so heavily on the strength of a reveal that the film loses any rewatch value. This is not the case for Never After Dark. The central mystery compels from moment one, and is woven so naturally into the texture of script that rewatch value is high, and likely quite rewarding.
Stylistically, there are more hits than misses. The former comes by way of intentional lighting and a top tier score. The latter comes in the form of tired imagery. Sure, certain images are common in J-horror, but sometimes a little experimentation would be welcome.
The Cycle (dir. – Jordan Downey)
It breaks my heart when a film wastes so much energy trying to hide an obvious “surprise.” Partially because it feels insulting to a savvy audience, but mostly because said audience then has to sit around and wait for the film to catch up with them. It makes for a turgid filmgoing experience, one that is rarely is by the eventual onslaught of “the goods.”
Such is the case with The Cycle, a police procedural with a horror element that anyone with a Shudder account can likely sniff out from the title alone, and will certainly detect within minutes of the film’s opening. Deborah Ann Woll plays Meg, an investigator whose father went missing decades prior. She has held animosity toward him ever since, and when his body randomly appears at a suspicious crime scene, she is called in to take a look. How could his body still be so preserved after all these years? Why was it next to the corpses of fresh murders? Why do these murders happen every thirty days? Hmmmmm, why indeed?
There’s a good movie to be made with the concept, but the execution shoots itself in the foot almost immediately, unassisted by the generally flat production value and soap operatic performances. The cast is likable, and does their best with the material, but Woll and co-star Jeffrey Donovan, try as they might with their considerable talents, cannot elevate the material.
The third act finds some juice in a handful of tremendous practical effects gags, but it’s too little too late. Had I watched this at home in a streaming format, I may have been more forgiving toward it, but as a festival experience in a packed theater, it was rather lacking. Points for the attempt, and again, for the tremendous effects brought in for act three, but this one just didn’t connect.
