It’s easy to forget that people who lived before us, people who lived in what we think are unfamiliar times, were, in fact, still people, with hopes, and anxieties, and desires that didn’t look all that much different from ours.
This is even true of the people who lived in the Scottish Highlands 45,000 years ago, which is where we find ourselves in Out of Darkness. These are not grunting goons covered in heavy prosthetics that we’re primed to expect from a prehistoric story—they’re instantly recognizable as real, full human beings. And this approach is at the heart of the film, which maintains the insistence that these were people, even as what occurs becomes deeply menacing.
This small group has traveled to a new land, but they quickly realize the place is more desolate than they’d hoped, and they spend nearly all their time simply trying to find food and huddling around a campfire as the darkness surrounds them, enduring horrible noises in the night and no ability to see more than a few feet, with only the fire as a light source. It’s quickly apparent to us just how utterly dangerous the darkness is for these people in this time.
Things get worse, and the movie becomes primarily about their survival, but while there are a few grisly scenes, director Andrew Cumming is smart about not turning this into gratuitously grotesque survival porn. He’s also smart about where he puts his resources—there are no bad CGI beasties running around cheapening the movie’s look. Instead, he spent his money on creating a language that’s been developed specifically for this movie, on clothes and props that may actually be period-appropriate, and on beautiful photography of an unforgiving environment.
All of this makes the movie’s ham-fisted conclusion easier to digest, especially since the ending has good intentions, and I find myself more appreciative of sincerity the older I get. Out of Darkness is a well-made, tense, often frightening film that pushes us to acknowledge everyone’s humanity.
Out of Darkness is in theaters February 9th.
