According to David Paulides, the author of the Missing 411 books, he estimates that there are over 1,600 unexplained disappearances in North American National Parks. In “Lovely, Dark and Deep,” director Teresa Sutherland offers up one of the more complex and haunting supernatural thrillers of the year, all set within the confines of a national park. What makes “Lovely, Dark and Deep” so haunting is that director Sutherland sets the entirety of her film within a national forest, all of which seems so suffocating and all consuming from the moment character Lennon drives in to its threshold.
Lennon is a new park ranger in an isolated forest outpost, the site of multiple mysterious disappearances, and she is plagued by visions blending the past and present with something even more sinister. Haunted with the disappearance of her little sister, she struggles to make sense of her visions and figure out if what exactly she’s experiencing in the park, and how it connects to her past demons.
Teresa Sutherland is a marvelous director and she has the talent of making such a beautiful place seem like an absolute death trap from minute one. When Lennon drives in to the national park she’s been enlisted to, it’s draped in darkness as far as the eye can see. And when she’s tasked with keeping her post and warned about the potential of isolation and cabin fever, things gradually descend in to madness. “Lovely, Dark and Deep” is simultaneously a crime thriller, a mystery, a cerebral horror film where the main character Lennon is literally a fish out of water who finds a rabbit hole that she soon realizes she can’t get out of.
Sutherland’s film has the potential to devolve in to something completely incoherent and ridiculous, but “Lovely, Dark and Deep” maintains its course with taut atmosphere, and some really spooky set pieces. Sutherland admits in the press release that she’s been fascinated by the startling inexplicable disappearances in national parks across America, and she offers up her own horrifying vision of what might be happening more as a collective rather than singular events. Georgina Campbell (who was just dynamite in “Barbarian”) is basically the only cast member in the film, as while the movie has its share of supporting characters, they play only minor roles.
Director Sutherland relies a lot on Georgina Campbell, and she is stellar in the role. Campbell’s processing of the five stages of grief, all while coming face to face with this mystery is just mesmerizing, and I really wanted to see how she would fare when all was said and done. I want to see so much more from Campbell, as I think she could explode as a genre star. “Lovely, Dark and Deep” is a horror thriller I think will sneak up on a lot of movie fans, and I hope it grabs an audience.
This year the Fantasia International Film Festival runs in Montreal from July 20th to August 9th.