When Ranger Lennon takes a new post in the backcountry of Arvores National Park, she already knows that unsolved missing persons cases are common here — her predecessor and sister, after all, vanished in these backwoods, too. But as Lennon searches for the truth, she quickly tumbles into a nightmare where memories, hallucinations and reality contort and amalgamate.
This is Lovely, Dark, and Deep. And director Teresa Sutherland ensures her picture lives up to its title, consummately juxtaposing the staggering beauty of her locations with their immense (and somehow suffocating) vastness. Much like Annihilation, Ravenous and the more recent Alone, the audience is jettisoned into a viridescent abyss that — when paired with the atmospheric score and topsy-turvy shots where the trees look like they’re shooting roots into the bottomless blue sky — offers a uniquely stunning and unnerving visual delight.
Georgina Campbell is also stellar as Ranger Lennon, toeing the line of insanity as astutely as Tim Robbins in Jacob’s Ladder. Her performance perfectly mirrors the John Muir quote that opens the narrative (“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul”), yet Campbell remains our anchor of humanity in a place where morality is ebbed away with reality — until the bitter end, at least. And that, arguably, is where Lovely, Dark, and Deep falters.
There is no doubt horror has a nasty habit of losing its mystique once the unutterable, unknown creature stalking our protagonists in the shadows is finally revealed. However, never learning who or what plagues Arvores National Park (unseen forces simply known as ‘they’, who are even more vague than ‘they’ in Kay Dick’s penultimate novel), the narrative’s crescendo is reduced to a fizzle. Despite this, it’s impossible to take away from Sutherland’s cinematography. It truly is stunning. And if you can overlook the flat ending, Lovely, Dark, and Deep has a remarkable view.
CAST
Georgina Campbell
Nick Blood
Wai Ching Ho
DIRECTOR
Teresa Sutherland
SCREENPLAY
Teresa Sutherland
DIGITAL
25 March 2024
