Heavy metal horror in ‘We Summon the Darkness’

[Rating: Minor Rock Fist Down]

Director Marc Meyers‘ My Friend Dahmer was one of the sleeper successes of 2017. While the film might not have achieved theatrical success, its long tale of influence has resonated over the last few years. Lead Ross Lynch used the film to transition from Disney tweenage flicks to more grown-up fare like The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and second lead Alex Wolff did the same switch from Nickelodeon fare to the likes of Heriditary. Meyers’ first follow-up, Human Capital, was released in September of last year, but his latest, We Summon the Darkness, sees the director returning to the creepier topics of his breakout film.

“On the way to a heavy metal concert, Alexis (Alexandra Daddario) and two girlfriends hear a news report of a local murder believed to be tied to a series of satanic killings. After the show, the girls invite three guys to join them at the estate owned by Alexis’s father, a fire-and-brimstone preacher (Johnny Knoxville). What starts as a party suddenly turns dark and deadly in this devilishly entertaining thriller.”

I really wish that the heavy metal vibe of We Summon the Darkness‘ first third carried through the rest of the film. The three metalheads – Mark (Keean Johnson), Kovacs (Logan Miller), and Ivan (Austin Swift) – met by our trio of friends – Daddario’s Alexis, along with Val (Maddie Hasson) and Beverly (Amy Forsyth) – generate a real sense of dude-like friendship, and there’s some most excellent discussion of various metal shows and bands that really lend the film a sense of late ’80s authenticity.

To explain just why the film goes off the rails would be spoiling the plot, and removing pretty much all of the “ooh, what’s going on here?” mystery which permeates the first interactions between the guys and the girls, but suffice it to say, the slow-burn  intrigue of the film’s opening third gets dashed to pieces during drinks around the fire.

After that point, the film turns into a standard stalk-and-slash, harried horror comedy of errors where things keep going terribly wrong, but comically. If the film had a bigger cast, or more to say, this could’ve been a darkly comic take on Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room, wherein a group of outsiders find themselves pitted against a deadly foe, and there are moments where it seems that might be where Meyers is headed.

Unfortunately, there’s no real sense of claustrophobia or solitude. Other characters pop in from the outside world with enough regularity to eviscerate all sense of actual danger, but without enough comic relief to be actually funny. They’re just bodies to add to the pile. It’s fun, for the most part, but We Summon the Darkness never really feels like there’s anything at stake.

That’s goddamn unfortunate, too, because all of the six actors in our two trios are pretty solid. Hasson’s sheer, unfettered glee portraying Val is the sort of thing that makes a movie worth watching on its own, as is Swift as Ivan, who’s exactly the sort of smart-mouthed clod who would’ve appeared in a film released contemporaneous with the era in which We Summon the Darkness is set. Forsyth’s Beverly is the only character who sees any sort of growth, making her the easiest to latch onto, and it further demonstrates the skill with which the actress has shined in other genre tales like Channel Zero: No-End House and Hell Fest.

Putting Johnny Knoxville on the poster, in the trailer, and in the blurb above is a bit of a promotional swerve on the part of the advertising team for Meyers’ film, as the actor is seen mainly on television in the background of a few early scenes. Only in the film’s closing moments does the actor really pop up in any sort of serious role, although he definitely gets to chew on quite a bit of scenery during his brief screen time.

Tagged as: Amy Forsyth