New Day and Time - Thursday, November 23, 2023 10:00 pm
Horror
France, 2023, 103 min
Language: French with English Subtitles
Director: Mathieu Turi
Writer: Mathieu Turi
Producers: Eric Gendarme & Thomas Lubeau
Cast: Samuel Le Bihan, Amir El Kacem, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Diego Martín, Marc Riso, Bruno Sanches
Contact: Kinology
It’s 1956 and Amir leaves his home country of Morocco out of financial necessity. He’s sent to the most perilous coal mine in France (known as ‘Devil’s Island’), assigned to a group of miners who are tasked with escorting a professor 1000 meters underground to take scientific samples. Once they’re down in the deep dark, it becomes clear that the professor has his sights set on something quite different. After becoming trapped in the tunnels by a cave-in, the group discovers an ancient crypt and soon realizes they are not alone in the buried abyss.
An exquisite blend of period drama and creature feature, THE DEEP DARK burrows into Lovecraftian-tinged mythos and delivers a gruesome spectacle of practical effects. With his third feature, French-born writer/director Mathieu Turi has crafted a claustrophobic thriller to join the canon of classic subterranean horror films THE DESCENT and AS ABOVE, SO BELOW.
“The winding twists and turns of the mines are nail-bitingly unpredictable, with a unique unease to be found when natural cave formations give way to carved brick, ancient inscriptions, and cave drawings of elder gods. The design of the film’s central creature thankfully employs practical effects with fleeting instances of CGI, lending it a bone-cracking grossness that makes the characters’ terror feel achingly genuine.” Julian Singleton Cinapse
“The Deep Dark delivers a riveting blend of a period-drama, archeological horror, and a creature-feature with a fascinating mythos for audiences to sink their teeth into.” Molly Henery The Blogging Banshee
“‘The Deep Dark’ speaks to the dangers that lurk deep in the past of the planet with millions of years to ponder the nature of what it means to live…or die.” Tim Wassberg Sirk TV