The Horror Show
Dark Summer
by Paul Solet
Dark Summer is just the horror film I was looking for to pass the time on a weekday evening. While not bringing anything completely new or shocking to the table, it’s got just that bit of originality and fun that makes a horror film worth watching.
Keir Gilchrist plays Daniel, a troubled teen who finds himself on house arrest after he hacks all of the online and social media accounts of fellow classmate Mona. And here’s the other nasty bit of his house arrest sentence: no internet. Boohoo, what’s a teen to do? Naturally, Daniel’s friends help him rig up a “borrowed” internet connection because he tells them he wants to Skype with his mom. But really, Daniel just wants to amp up the creep factor and try and get into Mona’s cloud account, the only one he wasn’t able to hack before he got arrested.
Warning, there will be spoilers in the next paragraph.
While online, Daniel gets a Skype call from Mona. He accepts and in all her Goth make-up splendor, proceeds to say cryptic things and shoot herself in the head while Daniel watches on helplessly and in horror. From this point on there are some serious trippy moments where the viewer isn’t sure if Daniel is really being tormented by ghosts or if it’s just his deteriorating mental health causing all his distress. From self-harm to vandalism, I really did find myself wondering if the whole thing was in Daniel’s head. But then his friends help him try and contact the spirit and things take a turn for the worse, confirming that yep, Daniel’s got himself a ghost.
Keir Gilchrist was one of the supporting characters in It Follows and his performance in that film was what made me happy to see that he’d landed himself a leading role in another horror movie. The supporting characters in Dark Summer don’t get any relevant development, but I can excuse that because they really were only there to serve as plot devices. The fact that I knew nothing about them neither added nor detracted from the story. The focus was on Daniel and Mona, and they’re about all you need to be concerned with.
Dark Summer is a fun film, and although there are some head-scratching moments where you go “huh?” the writers never fail to explain why something was thrown in to the thick of things. My only complaint is that in addition to the head-scratching moments, there are a few scenes that were probably only included because they were trying to develop secondary characters that didn’t need it. The film is short as it is though, so cutting anything more out would have probably done more harm than good. Aside from that, once you reach the end of the film, everything is wrapped up neatly and from start to finish makes sense with a predictable, yet fun, twist. (And don’t forget to stick around for a small clip after the credits role.)
All in all, Dark Summer didn’t blow me away but it entertaining, which is the least that I ask from a horror film.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
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