And Soon The Darkness Review

• 2nd Mar 2011

And Soon The Darkness is a remake of a 70s British thriller which follows two girls on a cycling holiday. This time around the girls are in Argentina and have broken away from their group tour to find the real country. Following a night on the tiles they manage to miss their morning bus and are stuck for another 24 hours in the village. Killing time, the girls head out to a beauty spot to catch some sun. After an argument they separate and Ellie is kidnapped forcing Stephanie to team up with the mysterious Michael and the local police man in a desperate search for her friend.

And Soon The Darkness is not a straight up remake of the original British thriller as they have chosen to sandwich a male lead into the film. Karl Urban (Star Trek) plays the Ricky Martin looking Michael who is also searching for a girl that was abducted.  The original film is a straightforward Hitchcock style thriller as the girl searches for her friend with the help of the local policeman. This film opens with a torture scene, that made me re-call Wolf Creek, as a girl is electrocuted in a dank dirty room. This opening ensures we know what’s going to happen once we meet the girls thus taking away any possible tension. Based on the opening it seems inevitable that the audience is in for the usual torture porn that has been so profitable over the past few years.  Sadly, this doesn’t come either, as the makers seem unsure of which narrative avenue to pursue. The conclusion wedges in a human trafficking story that is simply too little too late.

The cast is small but passable on the whole, with Amber Heard giving a decent turn as chased female but Karl Urban’s role simply turns into a pointless addition to the story.  The saving grace of the film is the location work and the beautiful photography by the hugely experienced Gabriel Beristain. The narrative calls for a subtle change from cycling holiday into paranoid thriller and its look is superbly captured by Beristain.

And Soon The Darkness is a disappointing remake of a 70s classic b-movie thriller.  The lack of focus in the narrative simply denies the audience either of the possible outcomes. The original film concentrated fully on making the audience wonder what happened to the friend. This time round we know what has happened to the friend due to the opening and are left wondering whether it’s down to the cop, the local Don Juan or Michael.  This narrative decision by the writer simply doesn’t work for tension or fear as we wait for the extreme violence that never arrives.  Not a terrible film by any stretch but fans of thrillers should stick to the original version of this film.

Aled Jones