Fantasia Fest: "Lovely, Dark, and Deep" - Film Review
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn't exist.
“I owe this land a body.” This ominous message is scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper by a man the audience never gets to know. He’s a backcountry park ranger for the fictional Arvores National Park. Lovely, Dark, and Deep could have been inspired by a recent and tantalizing conspiracy theory about missing people in America’s National Parks. In a country where nature is regularly paved to make way for new malls and housing developments, the National Parks are the last remaining vestiges of what this country looked like hundreds of years ago. There’s no light pollution, no cars honking, and an eeriness that lurks just beneath the beauty on display…a perfect setting for a conspiracy theory to grow. Maybe all the people who went missing in National Parks didn’t just get lost somewhere without cell service. Maybe there are people living in an intricate cave system in the parks that’s used to snatch unsuspecting visitors.
Of course, that’s only one theory. For Lennon (Georgina Campbell), it’s personal. She has been actively applying for a backcountry park ranger position in Arvores National Park for years. Lennon is finally successful and takes over the post vacated by the now-missing park ranger from the opening scene. Her desire for this particular role in this particular park comes from a mystery that goes back to her childhood. Even before Lennon arrives, the park rangers have heard rumors about her and why she wants the job. Only the audience is left in the dark for quite some time, as things in the park are not what they seem.
GUSTAVO FIGUEIREDO & DANIEL COIMBRA
It’s not difficult to make the environment of a National Park look unsettling. Anyone who has camped overnight in a forest or similarly dark place knows the innate fear of that level of blackness. Even if someone isn’t usually bothered by a lack of light, the combination of being exposed to the elements and away from civilization creates a bit of panic. Every twig snap, rustle, and crunch holds terrifying potential. Lovely, Dark, and Deep understands this, but doesn’t rely on an overuse of these sounds to create tension. It’s enough to be placed in Lennon’s shoes, trekking through the backcountry, desperately trying to unravel a mystery. Throw in the creepy note from the opening scene, Lennon’s flashbacks, and a seemingly ever-squealing-but-broken radio, and there’s more than enough to get your heart rate going.
As with any movie that builds its premise so wholly on a creepy mystery, the success of Lovely, Deep, and Dark lies in how that mystery unfolds and what is revealed. In order to make it to the end of the film’s mystery, audiences are forced to sit through some gnarly, unsettling special effects. The line between reality and fiction is continuously blurred. So much so that it can make a skeptical viewer wonder if Lovely, Deep, and Dark has any hope of wrapping up its story with a definitive, logical bow. It’s a valid concern given the film’s nonchalant choice of an explanation for why all these people are going missing in this particular park.
Perhaps one of the scariest things about life in the twenty-first century is when humanity encounters something to which there is no answer. It’s why shows about cold cases will never cease to be popular. With so much information constantly at our fingertips, it’s deeply unsettling when a person goes missing and their family can find no trace of them. Lovely, Deep, and Dark expertly preys on that fear for the first hour of its runtime, but near the ending things fall apart. In reality, sometimes we won’t find answers to deeply traumatic events, but in movies, we expect to get a more interesting answer than “no one knows.” As scary as it is to not know what happens, if a horror movie is done well, knowing the truth is far more bone-chilling.
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