Airi’s family has been in the supernatural removal business for several generations. Billed a sister duo, Airi seemingly arrives alone to a former isolated hotel turned country house, recently purchase at auction by a mother and son. She starts to get a look at the home, leaving the mother a believer and the son wondering if they are overpaying a fraud. Airi is great with the dead, but terrible with the living. The son suspects her of being a fraud, but his mother is a true believer. The mother shows Airi a painting she’s made of a horrible male figure that haunts the house and acts as a threatening presence. Convinced that the job will be easy, Airi makes a show of sending the mother and son away so she can work, but she warns them that she never works at night because that is when spirits are stronger. She promises to get started in the morning. Airi soon learns that the frightening figure in this home it’s like anything she’s worked with before and its brutal nature will prove even more chilling than what she finds hidden in an abandoned room.
Writer and director Dave Boyle did not come here to play. Never After Dark won the SXSW Midnighter Audience Award and it is easy to see why. While some bits and pieces are easy to put together in the beginning, Boyle deftly lays out a story where I at least had no idea what to expect. This film certainly isn’t your run of the mill haunted house story. Never After Dark is at times bloody, brutal, and capable of stealing your breath away. Moeka Hoshi dazzles as Airi, pulling off a clearly exhausted young woman who has been through too much in her short life. Mutso Yoshioka was genuinely terrifying the whole film, no matter how he appears on screen. Dave Boyle uses atmosphere like a paintbrush, including an elaborate spirit walking transition ritual. He makes sure to earn every moment of hesitation, every uncomfortable flinch, and some moments of stomach dropping violence that had me looking away. If you have a thing about human teeth, sit this one out.
Never After Dark is in select theaters starting today, with a planned wider release to follow shortly.
