We Summon the Darkness Movie Review

A horror movie by Marc Meyers based on a legend of twisted metalhead snakes playing off of the folklore of evil overwhelming metal killings in the ’80s.

A substantial amount of dark metal music became evangelicals’ number one enemy during the height of the Satanic Panic during the 1980s. Music classification was regarded as a portal for Satan’s wrath, and there was widespread dread and conviction that it led teens astray.

The three-stop comfort store on the highway for Jolt Cola and Twinkies. The TV shows Pastor John Henry Butler, a TV preacher played by Johnny Knoxville, rebuking substantial metal. “Youngsters killed in most recent evil killing!” is the headline of a newspaper containing two of the young women. A Rob Zombie movie could be made from this trifecta of metal, murder, and ethical quality, which seems to be an obvious combination from the ’80s.

We Summon the Darkness is written by Alan Trezza (Burying the Ex) and directed by Marc Meyers (My Friend Dahmer), and it is filled with very amiable, fully rounded characters in a completely realized world. Between Hasson and Daddario, there’s a shorthand that implies a bond that is profoundly enhanced. They’re also negatively impacting their careers. We have to watch the entire film with them because both exhibitions are incredibly engaging.

We Summon the Darkness isn’t quite as brilliant as it thinks it is, but it still delivers a fun surprise of a story and provides enough blood to satisfy genre enthusiasts. Marc Meyers, the film’s director, has a number of surprising turns planned, but the early scenes, in which he examines the relationship between the two groups, are the most compelling. And Meyers knows full well that his audience will be shouting, “There must be more to this?! ” at the sheer obviousness of it all, so he toys with it. Despite the setup’s potentially diabolical potential—girls vs boys—not much comes of it beyond some initial sexual tension. There is a greater focus on religion, although even this isn’t as substantial as it may be.

The woman power humanism of the main half starts to blur when you change your viewpoint regarding an accidentally-attended local meeting butcher movie. Furthermore, he is destined to appear as a loathsome Lurch when he appears as Knoxville’s minister without a doubt, yet he is rather part of the film’s portrayal of shady Christian activities. Overall, “We Summon the Darkness” is a terrifying ride well worth experiencing, even if it might be the first movie I’ve seen since the Coronavirus hit that could absolutely have utilized a cinema crowd.

This decade’s horror has been oversaturated by shows like Stranger Things and American Horror Story and films like The Void, It Follows, and The Guest. To its credit, We Summon the Darkness successfully combines tried-and-true elements with some surprising twists. While We Summon the Darkness has a very different tone than Marc Meyers’s My Friend Dahmer, it’s owing to his direction that the film is able to overcome some of its more cliché scenes. A number of these beats have been used previously, but the expert direction and consistently engaging performances elevate the material to new heights. It’s not easy to riff on genre conventions without making them feel stale, but We Summon the Darkness mostly avoids doing so. Is there a later time frame in which some of the twists could have been revealed? Sure. But that doesn’t stop it from being a bloody good time at the movies.

We Summon the Darkness comes to Streaming on April 10, 2020.