Out of Darkness (Andrew Cumming, 2022/2024)
Stuck for two years in the film festival quagmire, Andrew Cumming's prehistoric survival horror Out of Darkness (2022) unearths its way to the general public with a new title (PKA The Origin) and the final result is it should have stayed in the bog.
Set in 43,000 B.C, Out of Darkness begins with a small tribe landing on the shores of an undiscovered land; somewhere in ancient Europe. Tension soon replaces elation when our Paleolithic collective soon discover that they're not alone in the hostile wilderness. At first, it's the suspicious demise of a mighty beast, then it's the sounds from the darkness beyond their campfire. When one of the party is snatched into the blackness of night, the horror elements of the film really come into play.
What sells the film is its premise; this isn't just another one of those fish out of water stalk and slash type films, but one that's set in the prehistoric past, where its characters are familiar with survival. The other selling point is the unique language created for the film that's spoken by its cast. That's the good out of the way.
The problems of the film become abundantly clear with its typically modern and generic story telling. That's all well and good in your average Star Wars or MCU shite, but it's immersion breaking in a film which has taken some effort striving for authenticity with creating an ancient language. Why on Earth would a writer feel compelled to point out how awful the patriarchy is in a caveman horror thriller? Wouldn't be surprised if the writers gave themselves a pat on the back when they named two of the film's characters Adem and Avé. These eye rolling, cringe worthy faux pas would have been forgiven if Out of Darkness did not have one of the most reprehensible girl boss protagonists to ever grace a film since Odessa A'zion's Riley in Hellraiser (2022). Capping it all off, the film ends with an underwhelming final act revelation containing a glib social message en par with Robert Kerman's "I wonder who
the real cannibals are" from Cannibal Holocaust (1980).
Worth noting that the Scottish Highlands look fantastic in the film and really drive home its ancient setting. It's all a huge shame as the cast are generally good, particularly Kit Young as the young Geirr. Also, I can't really hate on Safia-Oakley Green as the girl boss Beyah, either; hardly her fault her character was written so poorly. If only this film was produced around the same time of the classic subterranean horror The Descent (2006), which also contained cavemen of a sort. The film wouldn't have fallen victim to such modern day unnecessary distractions like its menstruating girl boss protagonist worrying about her toxic tribal chief stripping her of her virginity amidst the unknown entity which is stalking them.
Funny thing about Out of Darkness's general negative reception is the criticism over it containing a diverse multi-ethnic tribe, Gucci looking fur clothes and shaved faces ruining their perceptions of prehistory. None of those were an issue for me. They might very well be anachronistic (who really knows, am I right?), but they were far more tolerable than the Tumblrina levels of writing. Besides, the best caveman film is Don Chaffey's One Million Years B.C. (1966) which was blessed with the iconic Raquel Welch and dinosaurs (courtesy of the legendary Ray Harryhausen) that were already extinct when our ancestors first walked the Earth:
