The Dark and the Wicked

I’ll give this movie praise for atmosphere, setting, and acting. This movie builds a lot of atmosphere, and doesn’t spend a fortune doing it (in a good way). The rural setting gives it a different feel than other movies centered around demons and haunted houses. And the two leads do a pretty damned good job. What kills this movie is too much atmosphere for too long. Slow burn is one thing. Refusing to let the burn build to something is another, and that’s this movie’s sin. There are only so many ways this movie can do a variation of “something evil is happening here” before the viewer will say “okay, we get it, do something else”. But this movie never does that something else. It’s just a slow drip of demonic energy all the way to the end. If the last third of this movie had picked up the pace, it would get a higher score. If the movie actually paid off anything, it would’ve gotten a higher score. It just refuses to do either, hoping that the endless foundation it laid will make for a good structure, but never puts that structure down.