Lovely Dark and Deep Review: Striking Cosmic Horror in the Wilderness
Teresa Sutherland’s feature debut,, gets lost in the woods as it tries to deliver a cosmic horror atmosphere.
Right up there with aquatic horror movies for me are woodland horror movies as horror comfort food. The ocean and the woods are as entwined in cosmic horror as each other, with more than a dusting of folklore in both. The great wide unknown, man’s hubris at thinking he’s better than nature, and of course, weird and horrifying things lurking in both.
Give me a movie full of strange and sinister happenings in the woods and I’m happier than a truffle pig. The Blair Witch Project, In the Earth, The Ritual, Friday the 13th, and more have informed this love, and the interesting thing there is how flexible the format is. If I have a preference, it’s the kind of ambiguous force of nature style of the Blair Witch Project and Ben Wheatley’s In The Earth. The kind of thing where you’re not sure if it’s just the full power of Mother Nature at supernatural work.
Teresa Sutherland’s debut feature film Lovely, Dark, and Deep is in that kind of camp, evoking a Silent Hill/The Ritual kind of psychological horror where the environment seems to manifest the protagonist’s worst fears. It can be frustratingly swimmy sometimes, but it sure knows how to make the most of its wooded wilderness.
Forest Ranger Lennon (Barbarian’s Georgina Campbell) has been newly assigned to the back-country patrol of a vast park. It’s an isolated, peaceful job, and probably your best shot at finishing that hefty book you started reading, but for Lennon, there’s a different reason to take on the job. People have gone missing out here. A lot of people, one of whom holds a special place in the heart of Lennon. Using her time alone, Lennon begins to explore the vast area, taking trips that last several days, hoping to find answers.
And find them she does. what she finds however, isn’t easy to comprehend, for her or the viewer, but the woods provide the right kind of backdrop for swimmy reality-bending
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