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Aden Young in The Unseen and Oluniké Adeliyi in Darken |
Canadians make a lot of special effects driven movies, but
they’re often for Hollywood producers. Genre films made with Canadian dollar
aren’t particularly rare, either, but good ones often are. The works of David
Cronenberg, Splice, Enemy, Pontypool, and most recently Les affamés, which must be the contemporary hallmark for great Canadian horror,
are standouts. These titles are arguably auteur-driven films rather than genre
pieces, and few of the films in between aren’t memorable. But they shouldn’t be
the exception to the rule.
Darken offers a
feature-length follow-up to an 11-part web series of the same name, but one
doesn’t need to have seen the predecessor to appreciate the film. Cummings and
screenwriter RJ Lackie create a dystopian world with timely resonance as a colony
lives in darkness sheltered from the outside world. Eve (Bea Santos, Coconut Hero) stumbles this mysterious
place when a murdered exile appears on the streets of Toronto and implores her
to walk through the portal between worlds. Once inside this place, known as
Darken, Eve encounters a divided group of survivors living under the spell of
an unseen demigod called Mother Darken.
Invisible forces similarly fuel the speculative bent of The Unseen as Bob Langmore (Aden Young)
tries to repair his relationship with his estranged daughter Eva (Julia Sarah
Stone from Weirdos and Wet Bum). He tries to forget his existence
while hiding at a small town mill while Eva lives with her mother and
stepmother while feeling herself disappear as she ages. Unlike Darken, nearly all of The Unseen takes place in real-world
outdoor exteriors and familiar settings.
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Christine Horne as Clarity in Darken Jasper Savage / Shaftesbury Films |
The best genre films don’t necessarily need flashy effects
to captivate the mind. They might conjure imagines worlds and take hold of
audiences with big ideas. However, Darken
always seems as if the characters are talking around something. For example,
Eve encounters a map with a clearly marked hotspot called Haven. We know it’s
somewhere important since Clarity and her minion Martin (Orphan Black’s Ari Millen) reference it with plans for destruction.
Kali fearfully says Haven is a dangerous place that is off limits, yet she
never explains why. Too quickly it becomes clear that Haven is just a wing of
the setting that the production couldn’t afford.
On the other hand, The
Unseen knows it’s a low budget movie and doesn’t try to hide it. The plot
might be far more difficult to follow compared to Darken’s lucid story, but nobody’s vomiting out the facts, either. The Unseen is flat-out incomprehensible
at moments and goes on far too long whereas Darken
benefits from concision. One tells a story better than the other makes one and
vice versa.
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Julia Sarah Stone in The Unseen |
The few special effects shots in The Unseen are remarkable for such a small film and Redknapp’s work
on beefier Hollywood productions proves advantageous when the film shocks the
audience with peeks at Bob’s dwindling body. The visuals of Darken, on the other hand, are tells of
its budgetary constraints. Besides the often spoken of but never seen Haven,
the characters roam dark hallways accented by the occasional coloured spotlight.
The few special effects shots, concentrated within the doorframe that offers a
portal from Darken to other worlds, are respectable, while the first-rate sound
design is a spectacular achievement that transports a viewer to an eerie world
of uncertainties and hidden dangers.
Cummings also shows a shrewd hand with her actors. Even
though most lines in Darken simply
fill out the story or further the plot, the actors deliver them with
conviction. Horne plays Clarity like a tyrant of Shakespearean dimensions—and
the best sci-fi baddies know to go big or go home—while Santos leads a troupe
of strong heroines and finds a worthy sidekick in Adeliyi, who has terrific
screen presence. Similarly, it’s exciting to see Ottawa actor Jon McLaren (Undercurrent) step up and he gives Darken a compelling moral compass having
honed his chops on shoestring flicks in the 613. At the same time, the
disparity between the size of Darken’s
ambitions and the scale of its production frequently works against the actors.
They often look like a bunch of actors in a game of committed cosplay.
Both Darken and The Unseen take audiences to dark
corners of Canadian cinema that aren’t usually explored with such spirit or
innovation. They’re worth the trips because they show that the talent is out
there. See these films so that Cummings and Redknapp can make more movies.
The talent is here and the cornucopia of big budget movies
shot in our backyards has given our filmmakers more than enough opportunities
to prove themselves. These films just need the full support to realize their
ambitions. Coming to theatres just days after Telefilm’s respectable
announcement to support 45 low budget new works that will inevitable screen for
a week at the Carlton and slip quietly onto airplanes, Darken and The Unseen
can’t help but make one wonder if we should stop asking filmmakers to do more
with less. Audiences might be better off with 23 films that let our talents
give their productions the flesh and blood to match their ideas.
Darken and The Unseen open June 29.