Movie Review ~ Lovely, Dark, and Deep

How many times have we been told to “walk it out” when we have a problem that needs to be solved or a pain we can’t seem to shake?

For many, that solitary time can be an opportunity to collect your thoughts and regain your footing during moments of great upheaval and strain, and I know that I’ve personally found it helpful, since I live in a metropolitan district, to take advantage of local parks and woodland areas where the outside world is blocked out for a short period. Whether it be working out the events of a bad day at the office, an argument with your partner, or processing grief, this is time no one can steal outright.

Lovely, Dark, and Deep is the second movie I’ve seen in as many weeks that seeks to use sorrow that has been unattended to as its focus to set up further horrors for its solace-seeking leads. In Cellphone (which I likened to a misguided butt dial), a woman finds her mobile device starting to show deadly visions of the future, triggering raw memories from her recent past and her deceased husband. In writer/director Teresa Sutherland’s Lovely, Dark, and Deep, a young woman accepts a job as a wilderness ranger at a national park known for its mysterious disappearances and is assigned to a remote station that isolates her further from civilization. That turns out to be fine by her because the job is a cover for a larger goal she’s been working on for years, a mission that intends to close a sad chapter of her family history.

Unfortunately, this last chapter is more of a dense appendix of cryptic notes sketched in handwriting that doesn’t always form complete sentences. The handwriting is beautiful, and what you can discern does enthrall, but too much of it is incoherent and trails off when it should be getting to the point. As presented, Sutherland can never entirely be sure what she wants her movie to be. Is it a mysterious thriller following the ranger as she looks for clues surrounding her sister who disappeared years earlier, or a horror film that capitalizes on several hair-raisingly spooky sequences? It could be a trippy sci-fi metaphysical examination of how we can project our grief onto others, or the film posits it could be none of these at all and just a mash-up of good beginnings of ideas that don’t have endings.

In the first fifteen minutes, there’s a promise that Lovely, Dark, and Deep is coming out of the gate with a bang. A short prologue shows a ranger departing his station and leaving an ominous note behind. This leads to the introduction of Lennon (Georgina Campbell, Wildcat, and Barbarian), a new park employee going through the final steps of introductory training with her fellow rangers at the start of the season. Though Jackson (Nick Blood, The Offering) attempts to engage, Lennon’s trouble with connection is evident, and her eagerness to arrive at her cabin (the same station we saw at the beginning) and get the lay of the land is palpable. Once there, she sets off just as quickly to explore the area, and that’s when we start to form a picture that she has come to these woods to seek more than a paycheck.

Years earlier, Lennon and her family traveled to the park where her sister vanished without a trace, joining hundreds of others who had gone missing over the years. Never believing her sister left the woods, Lennon intends to use her time to discover more about the park and its grounds, which have swallowed people up and never returned them. Before long, she’s starting to see visions from the past that co-mingle with warning signs the forest doesn’t like to be toyed with and will retaliate if it feels threatened. The deeper Lennon digs, the more the forest responds with increasingly nightmarish obstacles in her quest for the truth.

Sutherland has introduced an intriguing premise and cast the right person for the job, but the overall inertia of the film is evident from the beginning. The lack of urgency in making anything happen steals the thunder away from what could have been a heck of a good storm of scares mixed with emotional closure. There’s a sluggishness to the pacing, which results in a lack of narrative payoff, so even though the movie barely cracks 90 minutes, it often feels twice as long because there are passages when nothing notable is taking place. How can radical tension be built, or a mysterious air be maintained when even the actors look sleepy?

The positives are the striking cinematography from Rui Poças (Frankie) that captures the landscapes that are, well, lovely, dark, and beautiful. As visually impressive as it is, the rest of the material is so hollow that you appreciate it all from afar, too far if you ask me. I spent the movie’s second half waiting for the payoff the eerie first section promised but couldn’t deliver on. Even Campbell, who has raised the bar on marginal movies before this, can only do so much with a character that is given little to work with, dialogue-wise.  This actress deserves far better than an underdeveloped narrative in a slow-moving caravan to nowhere.

A first-time feature director, Sutherland accomplishes delivering a few nifty shivers along the way; it’s too bad the preview, and a few press images have given these moments away. Do yourself a favor, and don’t watch the trailer before seeing this if you decide to catch it. Despite its atmospherical setting, a few striking visuals, including Poças’s woodland cinematography and the performance of Campbell, Lovely, Dark, and Deep, can’t reach the heights its ambitious filmmaker has opted for. Especially in an environment where these kinds of films are made regularly, nothing about it blazed a trail forward.