The Dark and the Wicked-- My take on the movie with spoilers!
Plot Summary: Siblings Louise and Michael visit their dying father in a farm. But there's evil lurking in the house. Something dark and wicked.
Usually, you'll find horror film titles beginning with the Dark so and so... Or the Wicked man, woman, witch.
This movie claims to have both Darkness and wickedness in it. So the result has to be one scary movie, right?
But the question would be is the title used to describe one entity or is it about the dark (demon) and the wicked (human)?
The movie takes place on a rural farm where the lighting is always dull and the goats are always bleating.
THE DARK AND THE WICKED Movie Plot
An elderly woman is tasked with all duties at the farm while her husband lays pretty much comatose. As soon as she's done looking after the goats and goes inside, the bottle and sticks hanging on the barn doorway jangle. This is a horror movie so the wind definitely did not cause that. Someone is here and only the goats can see it. We don't get to see what it is. The entity is never visible to us.
Inside, the woman cooks dinner in the kitchen. It's onions and carrots every day. Does it go in a stew or not we don't know that for sure? She senses a presence behind her and looks back in fright.
The next day, her children show up: Louise and Michael. Their mother doesn't greet them with open arms and instead tells them that she told them not to come. She doesn't even let them settle down for a bit and finish their meal. Nope, straight away it's "You shouldn't have come."
Louise says she wanted to come to see her father but her mother is still too rattled after what she saw behind her last night.
They go see the father and find a nurse with the easiest job in the world, sitting by the window and filing her nails every now and then. We don't get to see her do any nurse-ly duties. She's just sitting by her patient and eavesdropping at the family's conversations.
Later that night, the mother is chopping carrots again. Everyone is asleep so is she preparing breakfast early or a midnight snack? Anyway, she gets lost in a trance and starts chopping her fingers with the carrots. Then realizes the fingers are not the same size as the carrots and chops them up some more. There is blood all over.
The next morning, Louise and Michael wake up to find no breakfast but blood smears everywhere. They run out calling for their mother and eventually find her hanging from a beam at the barn.
The siblings are devastated that they've lost their mother but they don't have to feel bad about never seeing her again. She's going to be back.
While Louise is having a peaceful shower her father suddenly shows up and starts shaking his head violently. His eyes are milky white. And then he pees himself. Louise is inconsolable and Michael comes to comfort her. Luckily she didn't lock the door while showering.
They go into their father's room and of course, he's sleeping. The nurse hands them a diary their mother used to keep and Michael finds that his mother has written odd things about "it" coming for the father. The mother was sure they were being haunted and a demon wanted his soul.
They think their mother was crazy but if she really was, well craziness is genetic too.
The siblings keep seeing odd things, the father seems to only want to haunt Louise, the goats die one morning, all apparently slaughtered. The siblings have to toss them into the fire and feel like they are at their wit's end.
The nurse is bored with getting not enough screen time and can't figure out what it is everyone is actually afraid of, so she uses her knitting needles to stab herself in the eyes.
THE DARK AND THE WICKED Ending Explained with Spoilers!
Michael can't take it anymore and when his floating mother pays him a visit, decides to abandon his sister and father and run back home to his wife and two daughters.
But when he arrives, he finds his family at the breakfast table, all apparently murdered. He can't take being alone anymore or goes crazy and uses a knife to slit his throat. But uh oh, it was all an illusion. There was no one at the table. The wife and daughters had gone shopping. If only he had called them before springing a surprise visit, the demon wouldn't have succeeded in his ploy. But he does and Michael dies watching his wife and daughters come in with a lot of shopping bags.
Louise goes to sit by her father as he slowly dies away. She thinks that is the end of the movie but nope, there's something behind her and she freaks out.
Now the movie ends. No budget wasted on special effects of what the family was being haunted by. The only visual we get is of the floating mother and a long shot of the slaughtered goats.
We must imagine what the demon looked like and of his true goals.
Scare scale: 2.5/5
Remeber that the priest was never really there, at all. Louise spoke to him on the phone and he said he had never even been to Texas During their brief conversation he even mentions he had a daughter named Louise who, he was told, killed herself. At the beginning of the film at about 4mins and 40 seconds the demon appears in the goat barn. He also appears in the shadows in the main house and at the end it is the demon who grabs Louise. He is very pale with flaky facial skin.
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