In Darkness

Sight Unseen

In Darkness
UK/USA 2018
Directed by Anthony Byrne
Universal Region B

I know we live in a bizarre time where cinema release patterns can go hand in hand with low quality downloads and home video versions... sometime without any real access for the majority of potential customers at all from the likes of seemingly evil corporations like Netflix. Even so, I have to say, I was surprised to find that, less than a month after it got a limited cinema release in this country, I was able to pick up a DVD of In Darkness from Fopp records (or Amazon, for that matter) for only the price of a crisp, five pound note. I think I was prompted to look at this one by seeing an interview with actress Natalie Dormer via a Twitter link and, having seen this now, I’m not sure if that was a good call or not.

In Darkness was co-produced and co-written with Miss Dormer’s fiance Anthony Byrne, who also takes up directing duties here and, on the strength of this, I’d have to say that I think he’s probably a much better director than he is writer. I was really optimistic when I started this film because, frankly, the first 20 minutes or so are absolutely compelling.

It starts off with a truly wonderful title sequence where a series of shots of the inner workings of a piano, bathed in red, synch up to the piano part of the accompanying music and then we go onto various shots of things which will mean something later in the movie... a scarf, a metronome... but mostly a shot of an eye, also initially bathed in red, which I’m guessing must be in homage to the opening title sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo. Indeed, we even have the eye blinks from that opening sequence which, in this case, usher in new colour palette treatments of the 'eye shot' as Niall Byrne’s score, sadly only available as a download rather than a proper CD, gives us a sinister composition which, by the end, briefly ends up in the same domain of some of the more abstract compositions of György Ligeti.

We are then taken into the first shot of the movie which is of a young lady being strangled by a gloved killer and, yes, it looks like it’s been hoisted straight out of an early Dario Argento giallo and it feels very 1970s, especially with the score going full-on like something you’d hear from Ennio Morricone in the likes of The Bird With The Crystal Plumage or The Cat O’ Nine Tails. Then we get our first and, sadly, only surprise of the story when it turns out this is footage from a fictional film and we pull back to see we are at a scoring session for a movie in which our anti-heroine Sofie, played by Natalie Dormer, is playing the piano part in the orchestra.

It’s here that we are first presented with the idea that Sofie is blind and, after the sessions wrap for the day, we follow her on her journey home. It looks like she works in Westminster, if the platforms are anything to go by and there are definitely a couple of Jubilee line stops shown on her daily journey. Her travels in the film also take her to Camden Town, it seems, as I noticed her going past Mega City Comics at one point in her travels.

When she is home, she listens to a mock up demo of the score that she is helping to perform for the film and it’s a great juxtaposition because the sinister, gialloesqe notes becomes her own soundtrack for the audience as we watch. A musical window onto the world in which she lives as the source music turns into non-diegetic and vice versa. Which is kind of interesting stuff. We also see that she uses the ticking of a metronome to help her concentrate past other noises in the night and help get her to sleep. We also meet her upstairs neighbour, played by Emily Ratajkowski, who is the daughter of a war criminal given sanctuary in the UK and who soon takes a dive out of the window, leaving Sofie as a kind of ‘sound witness’ to the events which may have played out in the flat above her. Sofie also finds herself in possession of something which various interested parties are trying to reclaim, by any brutal means necessary, as she becomes embroiled in a plot involving various different factions and some really good actors like Neil Maskell, Ed Skrein, Joely Richardson and James Cosmo. So there’s a lot to recommend in this film, for sure.

Ditto on the direction and composition of the movie There are some lovely set ups with some nice fluid camerawork, occasionally punctuated by some fast and jerky hand held stuff at appropriate action points. The film looks gorgeous and the acting by everyone, especially Dormer, is first rate so I really didn’t mind paying a fiver for this movie. There are even some unusual scene juxtapositions... for example, where the post autopsy body of the upstairs neighbour is being washed in the morgue by her father which is cross cut with a scene of her in flashback, taking a shower. It’s a strange sequence but I’m all for seeing unusual things in cinema.

However, the problem with this movie is that, after about twenty minutes, I’d figured out all of the upcoming twists, especially the ‘big’ reveal in the last two minutes of the film. I’d suspected one or two things very early on and, unfortunately, the overly convoluted windings of the plot meant that none of my suspicions were diminished and... well, like I said earlier... no surprises here. In some ways, I wish the writers had the courage to stick with the simplistic set up of the opening and leave this premise untouched but, as the movie wore on, I just kept getting a little more discouraged that things were going exactly where I suspected they were going to go... which is a bit of a shame.

So, yes, ultimately, In Darkness is a bit of a visual and audio feast of a movie which packages things beautifully but can’t quite hide the fact that what is actually being packaged is a little bit run of the mill and less interesting once the contents are revealed. If you like good cinematography and music, however, then you might want to pick this one up while it’s still relatively cheap.