An overwrought attempt at blending melodrama with horror shutters any potential “Dark Windows” had to deliver thrills and chills.
With a captivating minimalist poster and a synopsis that promises an intense home invasion horror, I went into the English-language Norwegian horror thriller Dark Windows with high hopes.
Directed by Norwegian filmmaker Alex Herron and written by Ulvrik Kraft (as Wolf Kraft), the synopsis for the film reads as follows:
A group of teenagers takes a trip to an isolated summerhouse in the countryside. What starts as a peaceful getaway turns into a horrific nightmare when a masked man begins to terrorize them in the most gruesome ways.
Dark Windows begins with a bang, immediately setting the stage for a harrowing ordeal.
Herron employs a familiar trope by beginning the film where it ends, introducing us to our main protagonist, Tilly (Anna Bullard), in a perilous situation as an intruder is trying to break down the door while she frantically calls 9-1-1 in the dark.
Suddenly, the lights come on, the phone goes dead, and we see boots slowly approaching Tilly, crouched in terror on the floor.
Just before she can meet her terrible fate, Herron rewinds the tape, and we’re taken back to a few days earlier. A somber Tilly sits in a parked car with her mom, protesting that she doesn’t want to do what they’re about to do. She’s emotional and scared of what people will think of her.
Soon we learn that the event Tilly desperately wants to avoid is a funeral reception at the home of her best friend, Ali, who was killed in a car accident — a car Tilly was driving.
We meet Ali’s grieving parents, her ex-boyfriend Andrew, and her Uncle Bob. While Andrew gives Tilly the cold shoulder, Uncle Bob is more direct with his ire. He cruelly berates Tilly and tells her it should have been her that dies instead of Ali.
Tilly’s friend, Monica (Annie Hamilton, The Wolf of Snow Hollow, Inventing Anna), comes to the rescue and tells Bob to take a hike.
She then persuades Tilly to accompany her and their friend, Peter (Rory Alexander), to steal away for the weekend at Monica’s grandparents’ summerhouse in the countryside. Monica hopes the escape will help a grief-ridden and guilt-stricken Tilly find a bit of peace.
Immediately upon arrival, Peter heads to the liquor store, while Monica and Tilly have a heated argument, ignited by Monica’s thoughtless decision to invite Ali’s ex Andrew to the house, even though he blames Tilly for Ali’s death. Monica wants to move on and forget the horror of what happened. Tilly thinks that’s selfish and believes they deserve to feel horrible.
From here, we get a lot of melodrama, exploring the different ways the trio of teens (who look nothing like teens) has chosen to cope with tragedy — avoidance, anguish, and alcoholism.
In flashbacks, we slowly reveal more of the fateful crash and realize it was more than an innocent accident.
Dark Windows is a lean 80 minutes, but it feels much longer due to the protracted buildup leading to any hint of real horror.
At about the 40-minute mark, we get our first glimpse of trouble with a brief shot of an intruder creeping around the house at night, wearing a mask and a hoodie. He quickly disappears without much ado as we continue to languish in an attempt at pathos that packs little punch, feeling more like a Lifetime original or a teen serial drama.
It’s 50 minutes in before the trio realizes they may be in danger. Once they understand someone is trying to scare them and possibly cause them harm, the film takes off like a bullet train in a mad dash to the climactic ending.
It’s here that the film starts to get a little interesting and, for the first time, remotely resembles a horror or thriller. Unfortunately, this is also the final few minutes of the film, and all the intense action comes barreling at us too quickly to have the desired impact.
I’m not typically one to demand ultra-realism from my horror films, and I’m generally happy to suspend disbelief when I’m entertained. But Dark Windows stretches credulity to the point of exasperation, and it’s not fun enough to stay off the inevitable groans and eye rolls.
Most horror films are filled with characters making bad decisions. We forgive it because we need a reason to put and keep our characters in peril. But the decisions made at the end of this film are unspeakably bad, to the point where it’s nigh impossible to feel any real tension or empathy.
Eventually, we learn that the person stalking the teens is out for revenge and must be someone close to Ali.
We’ve been given some heavy-handed clues early on as to who it might be; clues so obvious that it’s a pretty safe bet someone else is involved.
When we finally get the reveal, it’s far from satisfying, as not enough has been done to establish this character and make us feel any real shock or devastation.
The ending is cool, and we finally get a kill that feels interesting and creative (nearly the only kill in the entire film), but it’s definitely a case of too little too late.
The tense final moments would also be more investing if the filmmakers had not seemingly worked so hard to make us dislike these characters — inexplicably spending 90% of the film on character development while still giving us three leads that feel woefully underdeveloped.
Dark Windows is not a poorly made film. But the script is sorely lacking. There’s very little actual story here, and getting through it — even with its perfect runtime — feels like a chore.
Using grief and guilt as a backdrop to a stalk-and-slash or home invasion horror is an interesting concept with enormous potential. But that potential is squandered at every turn in Dark Windows.
The gravitas of the heavy emotions the film deals with doesn’t land because we’re not invested enough, and it makes the pace prodding as we impatiently wait for the horror film that we’ve promised — a horror film that never really arrives.
Overall Rating (Out of 5 Butterflies): 2
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