You never really know how you’ll handle a manipulative relationship until you’re in one. It’s one thing to say you wouldn’t put up with it, or that you would leave at the first signs, or that you would never end up there in the first place. Easy to judge and question the victim even as you vilify the aggressor. The truth of it is that you don’t always see the wool being pulled over your eyes until it’s too late to feel safe enough to do something about it.
Writer-director Berkley Brady’s DARK NATURE, which made its world premiere at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, plumbs the depths of both initial traumatic experiences and eggshell walk of watching out for another person’s aggression triggers, and the lingering work it takes to move on after finally leaving the situation. Alongside that is the complex range of responses from people outside the situation, from the well-meaning friend to strangers more interested in comparing in a sort of “trauma Olympics” than in understanding. Sprinkle in a good old fashioned grimy looking creature and a weekend woods retreat and you’ve got DARK NATURE‘s recipe for terror.
There is a section of genre fans and the Internet writ large who seem to look down on trauma narratives and joke about how we should move on to more diverse topics and depictions. They miss, perhaps, the subtlety of how classic slashers approached the subject without bringing it fully to the surface. Horror has always been about digging into and showcasing trauma in the same way it has always been political. In fact, the two more often than not inform one another. In the right hands, a new approach to exploring trauma can provide a vital new story for someone. Horror isn’t exactly the genre you want to see your lived experience in, but there is some good in seeing those demons exorcised and connecting with those characters.
DARK NATURE‘s strengths lie in its ability to present the full range of victims in recovery—whether the PTSD is a result of abusive relationships, military experience, or something even darker, or just trying to handle the turmoil of emotion that comes from helplessly watching someone you care about suffer—without ever fully making any of them out to be the villain. There are moments, particularly when Joy (Hannah Emily Anderson), who is on the rocky road to surviving and healing from a relationship where she was physically and emotionally abused, and her friend Carmen (Madison Walsh), who has been watching her live through it and seemingly just wants to help her heal, that feel tense in a way wholly unique to that kind of dynamic. While we’re not necessarily meant to sympathize in only one direction, Joy’s placement as the main character does mean we might feel anger at Carmen’s frustration because she does not—cannot—fully understand how hard what she wants for Joy is to achieve.
It can be hard to watch, but that perspective is also a valuable tool to remember in the real world, and works here because it goes deeper than mere dismissal of Joy’s complaints. It’s a space most friends will occupy at one time or another, and a kind of necessary demon to confront and overcome.
In a story whose premise relies on the power of minimalism—from hints at the threat simmering under the surface to hearing and seeing things that may or may not be there to being in a near-constant state of fight or flight—DARK NATURE‘s sound design knows just how to ramp up the tension. Whether it’s the discordant score from the band Ghostkeeper or a constant stream of overlapping whispers closing in on you, the sound design at play here does wonders for immersing viewers into the experience.
Pared down to its more basic elements, effectively telling DARK NATURE‘s tale and giving audiences a feel for Joy’s and other abuse victims’ experiences relies on minimalist dread. Not always easy to achieve, this film succeeds in spades, giving just enough crumbs to keep you aware of and engaged in the stakes without ever fully leaning into any one reveal. It could easily be read as a very on-the-nose trauma exorcism narrative—an approach the film itself seems to acknowledge and occasionally poke fun at—but it just as easily succeeds at being a tense tale of survival.
Audiences should proceed with a bit of caution, perhaps, as it is done so effectively as to be potentially triggering to some, but it is also a testament to the strength of Berkley Brady’s ability that such a powerful and immersive work is her debut feature. One part survival, one part creature feature, DARK NATURE has proven Brady is a filmmaker to anticipate.
Tags: Berkley Brady, creature feature, Dark Nature, Fantasia Film Festival 2022, Film Festivals, Ghostkeeper, Hannah Emily Anderson, Madison Walsh, Survival, Trauma, woods
Thank you so much for this review – it means the world to me and I feel so happy to know you got everything I was going for, and that our cast and crew literally suffered for ?