Watch A Dark Song

A Dark Song is a 2016 horror film that centers around a grieving mother desperately seeking out a way to communicate with her deceased son. Sophia (Catherine Walker) is still reeling from the loss of her son when she decides to enlist the help of the enigmatic occultist Joseph Solomon (Steve Oram) in a dark ritual that promises to bring her son back to her, but with a terrible price.

The film begins with Sophia arriving at a remote and foreboding house that Solomon has selected for the ceremony. The house is isolated, with no electricity and only a generator to provide power. Solomon informs Sophia that the ritual will take months to complete and that they must both be purified before they begin. This involves abstaining from food and water for several days and performing various arcane rituals. At first, Sophia is skeptical, but as the days wear on and the rituals become more intense, she begins to believe that they may actually be making contact with her son.

Throughout the film, the audience is kept on edge as we follow Sophia and Solomon through the maze-like rituals that make up the ceremony. We see them draw intricate symbols on the floor, chant mysterious incantations, and perform gruesome sacrifices. The atmosphere is oppressive and tense, with the film making full use of the isolated setting and the uncertainty of what might be lurking in the darkness.

The acting is superb, with Catherine Walker giving a particularly strong performance as Sophia. She expertly portrays the character's conflicting emotions, as she slips further and further into a desperate obsession to reunite with her son. Steve Oram, as the gruff and dismissive Solomon, provides a great counterpoint to Sophia, keeping the viewer guessing as to what his true intentions are.

A Dark Song is not your typical horror film. It is slow-paced, with long stretches of quiet, contemplative scenes punctuated by violent bursts of action. The film is a character study disguised as a horror movie, and it is the relationships and motivations of the characters that make the film so engaging.

One of the most interesting aspects of A Dark Song is how it handles the subject of faith. Sophia is a devout Catholic, and her grief has left her questioning her faith in God. Solomon, on the other hand, is a practitioner of the occult, who claims to have no faith in anything. Throughout the course of the film, the two characters debate the nature of faith and whether or not it is even possible to truly communicate with the divine. This weighty subject matter adds an extra layer of depth to the film, making it much more than just another horror flick.

Overall, A Dark Song is a haunting and atmospheric horror film that is not for the faint of heart. It is a film that rewards patience and attention, building its tension slowly until its shocking climax. It is a film that offers no easy answers, instead asking its viewers to contemplate the nature of faith and the lengths we will go to in order to overcome grief.

A Dark Song is a 2017 drama with a runtime of 1 hour and 40 minutes. It has received mostly positive reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 6.2 and a MetaScore of 71.