Never After Dark
This review contains spoilers
The more I thought about this movie the more I liked it, because it really is quite unique. Here are the fresher things about it that brought this from an 80 to a 90.
- We immediately know ghosts exist. Airi talks to her dead sister from the opening 10 minutes or so. I know a lot of horror movies start with opening scares and whatnot but Never After Dark is just like, "nope, this is incredibly normal for the person you're going to follow for the next hour and forty minutes."
- Which brings me more to Airi. I love her. She is so unique in this space. Tons of ghost stories involve exorcists or whatever that come in and they're scared too and they really stress how scary everything is. But Airi for a bunch of the movie does not give a single shit about ghosts.
It's just a job to her.
For example, she gets drunk at night and as she's dancing down a hallway she sees one of the ghosts and just walks by. She also sees one and looks at it and goes, "I'm off work now" or something and just completely ignores him. How flippant she is towards ghosts was so awesome.
Sure, it gets more serious later, especially when the serial killer shows up, but up until it does, I loved seeing how someone who has this as a job would act.
- There's a bootstrap paradox thing going on where she sees a ghost with an injury but she actually causes it at the end of the movie so the ghost kind of exists outside of regular time (I'm no scientist), which is pretty cool as it is because we don't see many movies that have a serial killer existing alive and dead.
And that leads to a great scene where the alive version gets trapped "beyond the veil" and ends up getting choked by the dead version of himself. He survives but still, very neat.
^ It's not that I think every single idea in this movie is completely original but some of it is more rare, and I just like how it all gets pieced together.
- Aside from that, I didn't mention the pacing, but yes, it's slow. Like I said, j-horror can sometimes feel more like a drama movie, and that's good. I prefer j-horror over typical North American horror as a genre holistically because I dig atmosphere. And having to think a bit about what's going on.
- And it's a good ending. Just so I remember: Airi might die. It's set up throughout that if you stop the flame on the candle she uses to go beyond the veil then she returns to the alive world. So she's dying, you can see her in the mirror with her sister comforting her... close-up on the candle, flame goes out. We don't know if she dies. We don't need to know. It's a powerful ending.
- The gore part was when the one guy had to start ripping his teeth out. I felt a little uncomfortable there.
- We immediately know ghosts exist. Airi talks to her dead sister from the opening 10 minutes or so. I know a lot of horror movies start with opening scares and whatnot but Never After Dark is just like, "nope, this is incredibly normal for the person you're going to follow for the next hour and forty minutes."
- Which brings me more to Airi. I love her. She is so unique in this space. Tons of ghost stories involve exorcists or whatever that come in and they're scared too and they really stress how scary everything is. But Airi for a bunch of the movie does not give a single shit about ghosts.
It's just a job to her.
For example, she gets drunk at night and as she's dancing down a hallway she sees one of the ghosts and just walks by. She also sees one and looks at it and goes, "I'm off work now" or something and just completely ignores him. How flippant she is towards ghosts was so awesome.
Sure, it gets more serious later, especially when the serial killer shows up, but up until it does, I loved seeing how someone who has this as a job would act.
- There's a bootstrap paradox thing going on where she sees a ghost with an injury but she actually causes it at the end of the movie so the ghost kind of exists outside of regular time (I'm no scientist), which is pretty cool as it is because we don't see many movies that have a serial killer existing alive and dead.
And that leads to a great scene where the alive version gets trapped "beyond the veil" and ends up getting choked by the dead version of himself. He survives but still, very neat.
^ It's not that I think every single idea in this movie is completely original but some of it is more rare, and I just like how it all gets pieced together.
- Aside from that, I didn't mention the pacing, but yes, it's slow. Like I said, j-horror can sometimes feel more like a drama movie, and that's good. I prefer j-horror over typical North American horror as a genre holistically because I dig atmosphere. And having to think a bit about what's going on.
- And it's a good ending. Just so I remember: Airi might die. It's set up throughout that if you stop the flame on the candle she uses to go beyond the veil then she returns to the alive world. So she's dying, you can see her in the mirror with her sister comforting her... close-up on the candle, flame goes out. We don't know if she dies. We don't need to know. It's a powerful ending.
- The gore part was when the one guy had to start ripping his teeth out. I felt a little uncomfortable there.
Mini Review: This was really cool. From the opening bit it introduces a pretty fresh take on ghost stories and the protagonists of such stories. J-horror appeals to me because of its focus on atmosphere over jump scares/gore, though this did have one pretty disgusting (but not overdone) scene. No, it is never really terrifying and sometimes feels just more like a drama, but I like that. Main actress did really well. Some cool twists and turns and even a slight genre shift. Great ending. Well shot.
Watch the Trailer