The Dark and the Wicked (2020)

During 2021 I heard great things about this film from certain members of the Youtube Horror Community I follow, considering "The Dark and the Wicked" (shot at the director's farm house and property) one of the best horror films of 2020. And several of the podcasters/horror fans of this particular community had it up at the top or near the top of their personal best for the year. So I took that seriously. I will say that "The Dark and the Wicked" is incredibly visualized by director Bryan Bertino and his cinematographer, Tristan Nyby, with seriously excellent music from Tom Schraeder and sound design from a very talented sound department team. I would love Bertino's team to remain a filmmaking ensemble. I just feel there is a lot of potential realized here. The story in and of itself seems rather simple: the daughter and son of a dying father, bedridden and weakening more every day, return to the goat farm of their youth to support their mother, who seems off, either overwrought with grief or really not herself. Later the nurse mentions how their mom had been whispering things while by her husband's bedside, not seeming to talk to him but "as someone else". When the mother tells her kids they shouldn't have come, she chops off fingers while chopping a carrot, later found hung from a rope in a nearby barn where the goats are kept during the night and rain. An evil presence, seen in the barn with the goats (quicker than a hiccup, so you have to keep eyes on the screen), overtakes the mother before her kids come over. Again, this presence is seen in silhouette in the kitchen as the daughter is washing dishes. It appears to a family friend as the daughter with a knife cutting herself, as the corpse of the mother to her son as he continues to try and fight off these apparent hallucinations (the family friend giving in to the whispers, a shotgun in his hand). It seems to possess the father, having him interrupt his daughter's shower, cough up a spider, levitate him to the ceiling. The evil presence seems to even take the form of a priest that visited their mother (Xander Berkeley). The evil presence seems to work as a virus that infects all it comes in contact. The evil presence even takes the form of a girl, saying she's the family friend's daughter, telling the daughter her grandpa shot himself. 

This film is a slow burner and the evil of the title gradually overtakes anyone who spends a lot of time at the farm. Why this presence has chosen this specific farm, these specific people, I can't personally say. But it does. The nurse, devout Christian that she is, is unable to ward off the evil, using sewing needles to stab her eyes and mutilate herself. What the son finds when he gets home, what he sees isn't exactly real...he loves his wife and his girls. The evil knows he loves them...and it wants him to take that knife to his throat. This evil presence runs through this family, intent on particularly preying upon and eventually securing the soul of the dying father. There is no mercy, no remorse, no other reason but to deceive, manipulate, gain control, and kill...this evil is dedicated to this mission.

A key plot device in the film is the mom's diary. Before it totally took her over, the mother wrote about how the evil presence wanted her husband's soul. This is a dark and wicked film. There is no hope. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. No one gets a happy ending. Much like his previous film, "The Strangers" (2008), the director doesn't let his family escape this film in one piece. Good cast of tortured faces, world weary and almost broken. Perfect candidates for an evil to overwhelm. And as the film goes, these folks (especially the son and daughter) increasingly deteriorate. They never had a chance. 

The rural landscape is as sad and lonely as the characters. I could feel the dead autumnal air as the brother and sister survey a large swath of land littered with brutalized sheep and goats seemingly torn apart by the tasmanian devil spinning through the herd. 4/5

I just got to say: Berkeley as the priest is damned creepy and there is just something about reading from a diary after the author has killed herself that is also so eerie. What she talks about ultimately rings true, even though she was an atheist, with unbelieving children also unfortunately experiencing what she did. And Berkeley as supposedly a figure of God's presence, proved to be yet another way the evil toys with them, re-emerging later that night, certainly puts the button on just what they are dealing with.