By David Dent
Action director Nathan Shepka slows things down a little in this 2022 Highlands set thriller, which is clearly indebted to the creepy stalker 1970 movie And Soon the Darkness (and its 2010 remake).
Two American girls, Andrea and Jess (Scots actors Elle O’Hara and Michaela Longden doing passable US accents) are travelling across Scotland on foot. Andrea is outgoing and up for a few laughs, Jess more studious and risk averse.
When the pair encounter two guys in a remote pub – Nate (Shepka) and Tommy (Craig McEwan) – Andrea becomes flirty while Jess remains guarded. And she’d be right to do so as the audience has already got a whiff of the blokes’ MO, described by the guys themselves rather than witnessed; basically travelling across Scotland drugging and having sex with random women, then discarding them. After Jess leaves the group to it – Nate already having spiked Andrea’s drink – the girls’ holiday rapidly goes downhill.
Mixing in some stolen cash, an ex copper who may or may not be a red herring, and an extended on foot chase across the glen, When Darkness Falls may not offer anything particularly new but it does build up a head of atmosphere. Ultimately the movie doesn’t offer any easy narrative choices either, which is good because for a while it was beginning to feel a little moralistic and by the numbers. But Shepka and writer Tom Joliffe (the latter responsible for scripting oodles of low budget fright flicks recently) keep it interesting.
Arguably at 105 minutes this slender budgeted piece could have done with a little trimming (and improved audio, but you can’t have everything); but, for a movie with a small cast and a limited setup, it’s very watchable, and it’s good to see a film where scenes are left to breathe rather than micro edited to within an inch of their life.
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