Review:
"We Summon the Darkness"
Release Date: April 10, 2020
Rating: R Running Time: 90 minutes A blunt horror comedy fueled by the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, We Summon the Darkness is unfortunately all premise and no payoff. Which is a shame because director Marc Meyers previously showed with his fact-based My Friend Dahmerthat he could pull off the trickiest of propositions with poise and initiative. Meyers takes us back to the bad old days of 1988, when heavy metal was under fire from the establishment for its supposedly scary and corrupting embrace of Beelzebub and his malevolent buddies. In the Fantastic Fest 2019 entry We Summon the Darkness, three young men (Keean Johnson, Logan Miller, Austin Swift) and three young women (Alexandra Daddario, Maddie Hasson, Amy Forsyth) meet cute in an Indiana concert arena parking lot hours before the start of a sold-out gig by Lord Lucifer. You know, the headbangers responsible for that hummable smash “Soldiers of Satan.” But Indiana is in the grip of a killing spree attributed to Satanists, and the Religious Right is out in force trying to persuade rock fans that no good can come of listening to the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica. “There is a scourge on our society, brothers and sisters. The evil that is heavy metal rock music is resolute, steadfast and unwavering and it’s going to corrupt our children’s souls,” preaches a somewhat subdued Johnny Knoxville’s televangelist John Henry Butler. But the kids just want to rock. Even if it means attracting the unwanted attention of the killers. To say more would be to spoil the best element of Alan Trezza’s otherwise underwritten script that is mostly set in a secluded house hours after the concert. The problem with We Summon the Darkness is that it never truly takes advantage of the scenario Trezza devises. Once the evening turns nasty, the prospective victims lock themselves in a room and then spend 30 excruciating minutes being screaming at and baited by the killers through a door that cannot be breached. Then We Summon the Darkness devolves into an inevitable bloody showdown between good and evil. But Meyers and Trezza’s execution lacks sharp wit, intrigue, or imagination. For the most part, once the killers are introduced, We Summon the Darkness unfolds as we expect it to. Even the kills are fairly mundane. Before the violence erupts, though, Meyers and Trezza find significant humor in the ridiculous but influential religious extremism that led to the Satanic Panic and the attack on the metal bands that triggered the so-called moral majority with each single, album, and video release. Sadly, the lead antagonist of We Summon the Darknessturns out to be such so cartoonishly maniacal that the point Meyers and Trezza try to make about using violence to promote an agenda rarely cuts deep. “Don’t sell your soul for rock and roll,” a protector begs outside the Lord Lucifer concert. In the case of We Summon the Darkness, it is not worth selling your soul for rock and roll and bad religion. Robert Sims Posted: April 10, 2020 Web site: https://www.facebook.com/watch/sabanfilms/ |
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