Dark Windows: Nothing to See Here
By Liam Lacey
Rating: D
According to statisticians, the leading cause of death for teens and young adults, both in Canada and the United States, is car accidents.
Fans of horror films may mistakenly believe the leading cause of death for teens is staying in cottages, cabins, or summer houses, or any place with lots of woods around them, a common habitat of masked serial killers.
The film Dark Windows, by Norwegian director Alex Heron, manages to work in both forms of teen-o-cide in a film that feels like a Mothers Against Drunk Driving public service announcement appended to a slasher film, though that makes it sound more exciting than it is.
Ultimately, I wonder if Norwegians, famed for the dark arts of murder mysteries and death metal music, are just too morally earnest to capture the true jouissance of American-style trash horror.
But enough speculation, let’s get to the autopsy report. A group of wild youngish (if not exactly teen) folk go out on a drunken joyride. They include Tilly (Anna Bullard), her friend, Monica (Annie Hamilton), their other friend, Peter (Rory Alexander), and Ali (Grace Binford Sheene). Their revels are abruptly ended when the car hits a tree and Ali is killed, though the rest of the group walk away unscathed.
At the awkward memorial service, Ali’s belligerent Uncle Bob (Morten Holst) confronts Tilly about her bad driving. After the service, the three friends decide to get out of town and head to Monica’s grandparents’ summer house, to grieve and party. As Monica says, “It’s time to move on” which she soon demonstrates by sending inviting texts to the late Ali’s boyfriend.
After you’ve been in a fatal crash, is getting in a car for a long drive with the same group of people the first thing you want to do? Get back on the horse, I guess. Fortunately, in this peculiarly casual jurisdiction (Norway, pretending to be some place in the United States), nobody involved in that accident gets fined, jailed, loses their licenses, or is put on parole.
Once at the cottage, Peter heads off to stock up at the local liquor store and continues to hammer the alcohol until Tilly wonders if maybe he might have a drinking problem? (Spoiler alert: Peter definitely has a problem). In Tilly’s periodic guilty flashbacks, we learn that Peter was the driver, though Tilly took responsibility to shield him. Also, she had some culpability in the accident.
Where does this go? Nowhere interesting, particularly for the first hour of the 80-minute run time, which plays like a slow Big Brother episode. Eventually, things begin getting ominous in familiar ways. Is that Ali’s voice? Who built a memorial altar to Ali in the kitchen?
Also, there’s a guy hanging out in the woods watching everyone. He finally breaks into the house in the last reel, as the flips the film into Hostel torture territory. Following the law of horror movie rule of justice, we’re remind that there’s always a punishment that exceeds the grossness of the original crime.
Also, don’t drink and drive. And if you must go down in the woods around Dark Windows, be sure of a non-surprise.
Dark Windows. Directed by Alex Heron. Starring Anna Bullard, Annie Hamilton, Rory Alexander, and Morten Holst. In select theatres and on VOD August 18.