A Dark Song - Film Review

This post will review 'A Dark Song'.  By necessity, some spoilers are contained herein.  Please consider whether you wish to read further if you have not yet seen the film.

I recently watched A Dark Song as part of the 'Film Four' Halloween horror film run.  I am a huge fan of Steve Oram (an actor that also starred in Sightseers and The World's End) and so I was quite interested to see what this would show of his ability.

The premise of the film is that Sophia Howard (sympathetically played by Catherine Walker) is seeking to use a ritual in order to speak to her dead son.  The means by which she wishes to do so is via the occult.  Steve Oram plays Joseph Solomon - the mystic keen to separate Howard from her cash whilst also in return guaranteeing supernatural results.

The film starts off at quite a slow pace but builds quite nicely as Solomon leads Howard through the various elements of the ritual.  Things take a turn for the decisive when she agrees to be completely sealed in - with a fateful warning that crossing the boundary of the protective circle could lead them to being trapped forever.

The mood from this moment becomes ever more tense, with clear indications that the 'ritual' could take many months to overcome.  There's little in the way of light and comedy in this film and the topics are dark.  The death of Howard's child is gradually described, with spare tidbits given to the viewer indicating something particularly unpleasant, eventually it would appear possibly related to Solomon's chosen profession.  This adds a very dark undertone indeed to the whole film.

Oram's acting in the key role of Solomon I thought was excellent.  There were few moments where he did not come across as anything other than a fairly normal bloke, albeit with issues/insecurities but also a huge penchant for the occult.  Howard is played well by Walker too - given the storyline she carries the role with a depth and sadness that truly pulled me in to the storyline. 

The only element of weakness I saw - and this was likely to do more with the screenplay than the acting - was in the repeated scenes of Howard demanding "why is nothing happening?" when just a minute or two earlier we saw miraculous events of feathers (or something even more otherwordly) floating from the ceiling.

Given that there are really only two actors on screen shown for any length of time, the film really does hold up well.  The older I get and with more decent stuff appearing on the box, the happier I am to fast forward through something sub par.  I did not press the fast forward button once for A Dark Song.

Whilst I enjoyed the journey and arc of the film as a whole, I would question the ending Sean Byrne chose.  I could see why Sophia asked for her 'gift' and reflected her journey as a character.  It also wrapped things up nicely.  However, I saw a documentary that featured Byrne indicating his intention was to continuously ramp things up.  The viewer absolutely receives a reprieve by the time the credits roll.

I cannot round off the review without mentioning the sound production.  The incidental notes are just right, whilst the background music suitably amps up the tension in all of the right spots.  There is one specific point in the film however (very close to the end) that suffers from a piece of dialogue being quite muffled.  There is a reason for this in the visual representation of what is taking place but I had to see the 30 seconds or so at this point 2-3 times to get a gist of what was being said.

Overall, A Dark Song is a tense, intense little film that has a really rather unsettling atmosphere.  It deals with some very heavy topics such as introspection and loss.  It also has a straight laced Steve Oram playing an idealistic man with clear character flaws.  It is a curious piece of film that I absolutely recommend.

Final rating: 3.5/5.