Watch Dark Light

Dark Light is a horror movie directed by Padraig Reynolds and released in 2019. It stars Jessica Madsen as Annie, a young mother who returns to her childhood home with her daughter, Emily (played by Opal Littleton), after her estranged husband goes missing. As soon as they move in, strange things begin to happen, including unexplained sounds and objects moving on their own.

The movie starts with a flash-forward to a police investigation of a bloody crime scene. It then cuts to the present day, where we see Annie struggling to make ends meet and take care of her daughter. When her husband doesn't come home one day, she decides to move back to the family home she inherited in the countryside.

Annie's relationship with her mother, Mrs. Keller (played by Kristina Clifford), is a tense one. It's clear that the two have issues stemming from Annie's childhood, but we're not sure what happened to cause this tension. As soon as Annie and Emily arrive in the old house, things start to go wrong. Emily is constantly scared and believes she's seeing something in her room at night. Annie initially dismisses her daughter's fears as childish, but soon starts experiencing strange things herself.

The movie plays up the haunted house tropes well - creaking floorboards, slamming doors, an old family photo album with mysterious pictures - but adds its own creepy twists. The most unique aspect of the movie is the creature that seems to be haunting the house. It's a humanoid creature with no facial features, covered in black goo. The creature's first appearance is a genuinely scary moment and its design is a great mix of creepy and gross.

Throughout the movie, we get flashbacks to Annie's childhood and see that she's haunted by a traumatic experience involving her father. This adds an emotional depth to the story and gives a good reason why Annie is so scared of the house. She's not just fleeing from the supernatural, but from her own demons as well.

The performances in Dark Light are solid across the board. Jessica Madsen is great as Annie, effectively conveying the character's fear and desperation. Opal Littleton is a good young actress and manages to make Emily's fear believable. Kristina Clifford gives a strong performance as Mrs. Keller as well, adding a layer of complexity to her character.

The movie's pacing is a little slow at times, but it doesn't detract from the overall experience. It does a good job of building tension and there are some genuinely scary moments throughout. The creature design is a highlight and the use of practical effects instead of CGI is commendable.

One of the strengths of Dark Light is its ambiguity. The movie never answers all the questions it raises, leaving the audience to fill in some of the blanks themselves. While this might frustrate some viewers, it adds to the movie's eerie atmosphere and gives it a sense of mystery.

Overall, Dark Light is a solid horror movie that doesn't reinvent the wheel but executes the genre's conventions effectively. It's simultaneously a haunted house movie and a creature feature, and manages to blend the two genres together nicely. While it might not be a new classic, it's certainly worth a watch for horror fans looking for a decent scare.

Dark Light is a 2019 horror movie with a runtime of 1 hour and 30 minutes. It has received mostly poor reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 4.4.