By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The award-winning, women-led fantasy/horror hybrid DARKEN opens across Canada this Friday, June 29, and we’ve got an exclusive clip to share that emphasizes its disturbing side.
DARKEN, from A71 Entertainment and directed by Audrey Cummings, will play theaters across the Great White North; see the complete info below. During its festival play, it was named Best Science Fiction Feature at the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival and Best Fantasy Feature at the Motor City Nightmares International Film Festival, and won four awards at the Blood in the Snow Festival including Best Director. Bea Santos, Oluniké Adeliyi, Ari Millen, Zoë Belkin, Christine Horne, Jon McLaren, Dmitry Chepovetsky, Zehra Leverman, and Paul Amos star in the film, whose world was introduced with the YouTube series DARKEN: BEFORE THE DARK. The synopsis: “After a young woman is accosted by a dying warrior in the middle of the street, a bizarre incantation propels her into the realm of Darken—a violent prison-like world of labyrinthine rooms, interconnected with no apparent rhyme or reason and no way of escape. As she fights for survival within this brutal place, she finds allies who are rebelling against the rule of a self-appointed religious despot who demands allegiance to an all-powerful god called ‘Mother Darken.’ Eve and her allies must fight with everything they have if they are to have any hope of surviving the horrors Darken has in store for them.”
DARKEN will have special one-night screenings at the following venues:
• Cineplex Parklane, Halifax
• SilverCity, Sudbury
• SilverCity, Windsor
• Park Cineplex, Vancouver
• Cineplex Eau Claire, Calgary
It will begin week-long engagements on Friday at these theaters:
• Cineplex Yonge Dundas, Toronto
• Landmark New WestMinster, Vancouver
• Landmark 24 Kanata, Ottawa
• Landmark 24 Whitby
• Landmark Winnipeg Towne
• Landmark Country Hills, Calgary
• Landmark Penn Centre, St. Catharines
