By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Safia Oakley-Green, Kit Young and Chuku Modu
Directed by Andrew Cumming
Written by Ruth Greenberg
Bleecker Street/Stage 6 Films
Did the sun ever shine in humankind’s distant past? I don’t mean to pick on OUT OF DARKNESS specifically with this question, it’s just that the early scenes set under gloomy overcast or amidst fog-shrouded hills put me in mind of the fact that filmmakers always seem to take the phrase “the mists of time” literally. Life was no doubt rough and dangerous for our long-ago ancestors, so I guess it makes sense that the weather in movies about them inevitably sets the corresponding ominous/threatening visual tone. But surely, at least one tribe or group struggling to survive did so under bright blue skies?
Now that I’ve got that random thought out of my system, I can offer an appreciation of the indeed appropriate atmosphere that director Andrew Cumming and cinematographer Ben Fordesman bring to OUT OF DARKNESS. It is set, as an opening title informs us, 45,000 years ago, and darkness is almost a character in and of itself. The movie’s small band of Paleolithic protagonists are frequently seen surrounded by pitch-black night barely penetrated by the flames of campfires, and when they venture at one point into dense woods, the forest seems to swallow them whole. There’s a pervasive sense of being stranded in an unfamiliar environment where there’s no one around to protect this band of nomads, which is particularly troublesome when it becomes evident they’re being stalked by “evil, bloodthirsty things” lurking just out of sight around them.
That description is delivered by Odal (Arno Lüning), the eldest of the sextet, as he delivers their backstory around the fire early in the film. (The dialogue is all in a persuasive, invented, English-subtitled language developed by historian/linguist Daniel Andersson.) Having fled their previous home in search of one with a more abundant food supply, they have wound up in a desolate landscape, shot on some very appropriate locations in northwest Scotland. Survival doesn’t seem much more tenable in this bleak place, and appears to be even less likely once strange and frightening sounds make it clear something dangerous sees them as its own prey.
The first act of OUT OF DARKNESS swiftly establishes the characters and their dynamics. Adem (Chuku Modu) is their alpha-male leader, whose mate Ave (Iola Evans) is pregnant but who is more staunchly protective of his preteen son, Heron (Luna Mwezi). Geirr (Kit Young) is more emotional and sensitive than Adem, which puts him at a disadvantage under the circumstances but allows him to forge a tentative relationship with Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), a teenage “stray” the group has picked up who is way at the bottom of this social totem pole. Women in general are clearly undervalued in this microcosm of prehistoric society, and the dialogue translations expressing that idea are occasionally on-the-nose. Elsewhere, the subtitles play as distractingly modern once in a while (“There’s fuck all here”), and the same goes for the haircuts and neatly trimmed facial hair on view. No doubt the appearances of these primordial people were well-researched by the filmmaking team, but on screen, they do give the impression that there’s an unseen stylist tagging along with them.
Nonetheless, OUT OF DARKNESS succeeds for most of its running time as an elemental survival-horror saga, stripped down (at 87 minutes, it’s a relief from the running-time bloat that has afflicted genre cinema of late) with a commendably focused narrative from screenwriter Ruth Greenberg. The band of six attempt to make a three-day trek to distant foothills with caves where they can find shelter, and along the way discover further, grisly evidence of the vicious, hungry and unseen predator or predators. Cumming does a fine, edgy job of maintaining a constant sense of threat without specifically revealing its nature, aided by Adam Janota Bzowski’s eerie and aggressive tribal score.
Ultimately, once the exact nature of what’s hunting the small party is revealed, thematic concerns overtake the narrative ones and the suspense and terror slip away. It’s not giving away too much to note that Beyah rises above the adversity she faces from both within and outside her pack of fellow travelers to become most likely to survive, and it’s also not unfair to say that the eventual focus on this young female warrior in an eons-ago setting can’t help but bring last year’s PREY to mind. Yet if OUT OF DARKNESS isn’t quite as successful overall, Oakley-Green’s confident handling of her persevering and heroic role helps the movie through those portions where the tension lulls.
