By David Dent
The Scottish Tourist Board may advertise the wilds of the Highlands as a romantic holiday destination, but 45,000 years ago – the period in which this film is set and location for Out of Darkness – it was a rather different proposition.
The first shot of Andrew Cumming’s debut feature is impressive; a spot on a black screen increases in size, resolving itself into a campfire, around which sits the film’s Stone Age ‘family’, with young Heron (Luna Mwezi) asking to hear a bedtime story. The account that’s given is the family’s history of how they came to occupy the “old and dark” land, an inhospitable spot full of nighttime terrors.
The other members of the group include leader and Heron’s father Adem (Chuku Modu), his brother Geirr (Kit Young), Adem’s pregnant mate Ave (Iola Evans), elder Odal (Arno Lüning) and young Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), a ‘stray’ recently adopted by the others, whose value to the group as an additional child bearer is secured when she menstruates for the first time, particularly after Ave loses the child.
As if wilderness survival isn’t tough enough, there’s a ‘something’ stalking the land; whatever it is, it’s big enough to leave piles of bloodied bones in its wake and cause harm to members of the family. Ultimately it’s Beyah who becomes the hero of the piece (not least for persuading the others to eat one of their fallen family in order to survive), but as the movie progresses, the question is (silently) asked as to where the line is drawn between human and animal in this prehistoric world.
Out of Darkness does a lot with not much. If one can ignore the rather tidy haircuts and well-fed faces of the cast, a lot of work has been done to establish these characters as other, down to the guttural ‘Tola’ language spoken; the whole movie is subtitled. The plight of the family is supported by crisp photography and natural lighting (what there is of it).
This isn’t a horror film as such, but Cumming mounts the scares and the tense moments just like your favourite fright flick. Ultimately the real horror here is the desolate existence carved out by a civilisation who may have left the caves but have yet to acquire the skills to stave off starvation and external threat.
Out of Darkness is out now in cinemas.
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