And Soon The Darkness

It seems that, in recent years, there have been numerous films featuring Americans travelling abroad and becoming victims of unspeakable horrors, whether it is in the two Hostel films, Turistas or Taken. It seems as if the film industry is doing everything it can to warn people that the world is a strange and dangerous place where there are black market organ dealers, psychopathic murderers or people who want to kidnap you and sell you so that you can be mutilated and killed by rich foreigners. The latest across my path is And Soon the Darkness which follows a couple of young women on a cycling holiday in Argentina.

And Soon the Darkness, a remake of the 1970 British horror film of the same name, begins in a dark cellar where a young woman in a bikini, who has clearly been beaten, is chained to the wall and is doused in water before being electrocuted by a man with a generator and a couple of wires. Four months later, and American friends Stephanie and Ellie are about to begin their cross-country bicycle tour in Argentina.

Ellie is the more outgoing of the two and, when they are out in the town bar, she unplugs the jukebox which is playing la Macarena before plugging it back in and selecting the Divinyls' I Touch Myself and dancing provocatively around the bar, trying to get the attention of the moody looking guy at the bar. When he goes to the toilet, she follows and again tries to speak to him but without success. Giving up on him, she turns her attention to one of the locals and is soon dancing and kissing him. Left on her own, Stephanie is disturbed when she can't see her best friend and, after frantically looking around in the bar, she finds Ellie outside with her 'conquest'. When he suggests a threesome with the two friends, Ellie tells him that isn't on the cards and Stephanie returns to the hotel to get a reasonably early night so they can be up to catch the bus at 8am the next day.

Woken by a loud bang at the window, Stephanie is startled and afraid, but this soon turns to anger when she realises that the commotion outside is Ellie trying desperately to keep the amorous Argentinian from getting into their room as she has no intention of going anywhere with him. Desperate to end the argument outside and get Ellie safely into the hotel room, Stephanie goes outside and drags her inside and then locks the door. Drunk, horny and angry, the local starts banging on the door and demanding to see Ellie, with each thump on the door moving the plug to the alarm clock further out of its socket until it lands on the floor. The one positive is that the mysterious guy from the bar comes from his hotel room, directly opposite theirs, and puts the man in an arm lock until the hotel owners convince him to let the young man go if he promises to leave.


The next day, Stephanie wakes up, says that the alarm clock is off and, after checking the time on her mobile phone, realises that they will be late for the bus unless they really get a move on. With Ellie more than a little hung over, progress isn't particularly quick and they arrive at the meeting place only to see the bus disappearing.

Unsure of what to do next, they ask at reception about a place called Villa del Lago and the kindly old woman who runs the place and speaks pretty good English, tells them that is no good and recommends a couple of other places. After convincing Ellie to actually go out and do something, the two head off to Villa del Lago to see the waterfall and sunbathe. After a couple hours of solitude and silence, Stephanie tries to convince her best friend that they should go and do something else but Ellie just wants to stay where they are and, after a little spat, Stephanie storms off and cycles up to the main road, expecting Ellie to follow. When she doesn't, Stephanie heads back down along with the mysterious guy from the hotel, Michael, and Ellie is nowhere to be found.


The local policeman, Calvo, isn't any help even when Ellie's mobile phone is found, her bike has disappeared and Michael locates some blood spots in the sand, information that he keeps to himself. Unwilling to just sit there and let police bureaucracy run its course, Stephanie is desperate to try and find her friend by herself but agrees to let Michael help even though she doesn't know exactly who he is, what he is doing in Argentina or why he knows the language and local policeman so well.

The way the film develops won't come as any surprise to anyone who's seen the original but, for everyone else, it is an interesting and well worked exercise in tension and character development. You're never quite sure exactly who is on Stephanie's side and whether they are genuinely friendly or are hiding some horrible ulterior motive, whether some people are in cahoots or just strangers and how things will resolve themselves in the final act.

I would guess that the two big selling points of this film are Amber Heard, who has made quite a name for herself in the horror genre with All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, The Stepfather remake and (fairly brief appearance in) Zombieland and Karl Urban, who seems to have made a career man who are either assassins, secret agents and other strong action types. If I were to explain Karl Urban's character, Michael, that would be to give away one of the major plot reveals and completely ruin the film. Stephanie, on the other hand is basically 'what you see is what you get' as she is just an American tourist who wants to go on a cycling trip across Argentina, forget an old relationship and spend time with her best friend, Ellie. When Ellie disappears, Stephanie is, as most people would be, pretty much lost in a rural area of South America, wanting to put all her faith in Calvo, but really wants to get on with things as she knows that, as the clock ticks, the chances of finding Ellie decrease.


Going by the opening scene, I half expected that director Marcos Efron was going to take the film in a Hostel/Saw direction but, thankfully, that proved not to be the case and it stuck much more to the mystery/thriller direction of the original. The principal cast, with Amber Heard and Odette Yustman (herself no stranger to horror, having played the lead in The Unborn) making a fairly realistic and believable couple of travellers who come across as good friends. Karl Urban is solid without being on top form in what is one of the more complex roles and César Vianco is nicely ambiguous and more than a little creepy as the Argentinian cop, Calvo.

If you aren't familiar with the original film and come to this fresh, it is a fairly well made mystery-thriller with some scenes that are more suited to the horror genre. And Soon the Darkness isn't the finest film ever created but it is a very watchable film and the relocation from France to Argentina works very well; this version is one of the more palatable remakes of recent years and far better than the re-imaginings of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween and The Wicker Man.


The Disc

Extra Features
Before you get to the main menu, there are skippable trailers for The Tourist, Brighton Rock and The Last Exorcism. When you select special features, there are only two options: trailer and deleted scenes. The menu itself is nicely designed with the options easy to navigate and with some fairly bassy and ominous music playing in the background.

Deleted Scenes (6:11, HD) are still in a very rough form with the letterboxed picture in the middle and time codes and other information on the top and bottom of the screen. None of the three really cry out to be reinserted in the film so I think a director's cut is out of the question.

Mercifully, the trailer does not have 'voiceover man' running the images on screen although I do feel that it shows a little more than it should.


The Picture
This MPEG 4 AVC 1080p picture presents the film extremely well with the location shooting in Argentina paying dividends so you have the dry shrub land and the Andes firmly setting the scene and confirming her location. This also means that some scenes look completely idyllic with the bright sunshine, blue sky and picturesque scenery but others, when you get to a more desolate location, show the vastness of the country and why it would be so easy for someone to go missing.

In terms of the picture quality, there is no heavy graining but some scenes have some slight surface grain which suits the film extremely well. Detail level is very high and colours are vibrant and strong, from the lush greens of the vegetation to the bright blue skies and colours on people's clothing. Contrast levels are also very good so that when it comes to a low light scene, such as in the bar, there is no loss of detail despite the dark interior.

The Sound
You have the choice of DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 or LPCM 2.0 stereo and, to be quite honest, it's almost a coin toss decision as there are barely in the scenes in which the rear surrounds come into play and they both do such a tremendous job with the dialogue, score and atmospherics that there is little between them. However, I did find that the DTS-HD MA track did slightly better job with the ambient sounds such as the wind rustling leaves, insects chirping and people chattering in the bar.


Final Thoughts
And Soon the Darkness will never be considered a great or classic thriller/horror film and I wonder whether it would put people off travelling abroad - the original certainly didn't prevent Brits from travelling to France, but Argentina is a different matter. It is very well put together with decent direction, writing and acting and it's something that you could watch twice, seeing if you can spot any clues in the first two acts once you know how it finishes.

It is a shame that there aren't more extra features on the disc than the trailer and four deleted scenes as an interview or commentary with the filmmakers would have been interesting as I would like to know why they decided to remake the original British film, when they first saw it, why Argentina and various other aspects of the filmmaking process. That being said, the AV quality is extremely good so this is at least worth a rental.