“Don’t Look in the Dark” will be shown at The New Jersey Film Festival, Jan. 31.
Feeling lost? Confused? Not knowing which way to turn? Beset by threatening, mysterious forces that are impossible to fight back against?
Well, one, I don’t blame you, given everything that is going on in the world today. And, two, you will probably relate to the two characters of “Don’t Look in the Dark,” a novel and deeply unnerving psychological horror film that will screen at the New Jersey Film Festival in New Brunswick, Jan. 31 at 7 p.m., and also be available online that day.
Reminiscent of 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project,” the low-budget, 71-minute film — directed by Samuel Freeman of Montclair — claims to be made up of “found footage.” A message at the start reads:
On April 4, 2022, a couple went camping in the Pinelands National Reserve.
Without their knowledge, their phones began mysteriously recording, capturing broken audio and video of the events that followed.
This is their final account.
We hear the voices of Golan (Dennis Puglisi) and his pregnant wife Maya (Rebi Paganini) much more than we see them. The woods where they are camping are also shown in a fragmentary way — some trees here, a bit of leaf-covered ground there — since the premise is that the cellphones are mostly capturing sounds and images on their own, without the control of their owners. The cameras jerk around unsteadily, as your phone would if you were just carrying it and weren’t consciously filming anything.
Many segments are devoted to darkness, or near-darkness, with just Golan and Maya’s voices and, sometimes, mysterious sounds, to engage the viewer’s attention.
Maya sees a child in the woods, or maybe she just thinks she sees it. She and Golan get lost. Night comes. They try to help each other, but also bicker. Panic ensues. Maya wonders if she is having prepartum hallucinations. Or maybe Golan is manipulating her. And maybe she, or he, or both or them are just going insane.
At one point, Golan throws out the idea that with everything the cellphones have captured, he’s got a movie.
“A movie?” Maya says. “This is, like, a nightmare.”
Maybe it is all meant as a metaphor about marriage. Or parenthood. Or fascism. Or the threat of AI. Many interpretations are possible, and they are all equally valid, given the murkiness of what is on screen, and the mystery of what lies beyond the reach of what Maya and Golan’s senses can grasp, and what their cellphones can document.
Freeman stated it well, in a press release, saying that the film “was made with one goal: to create a theatrical experience like no other. Every audience sees something different. Every theater reveals something new. No two viewings feel exactly the same. It is meant to unsettle you, confuse you, draw you in, and then leave you wondering if you missed something, because maybe you did. This is our attempt to redefine what a found footage film can be, and what watching a horror movie in the dark can truly feel like.”
“Don’t Look in the Dark” will be shown at The New Jersey Film Festival at Voorhees Hall at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, Jan. 31 at 7 p.m., and also be available online all day Jan. 31. Director Samuel Freeman will participate in a question-and-answer session after the screening. Visit njfilmfest.com.
Here is the film’s trailer:
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