Out of Darkness

We've seen a number of films that involve the early beginnings of Man, and they typically are grim at best. Surely, thousands of years prior had to be challenging times, but when one looks at films, such as "Quest for Fire", the 'dawn of man'  sequence of "2201: A Space Odyssey" or even "Caveman", there is truly a definite pattern. Now we have "Out of Darkness" to add to that slowly growing list.

A small boat reaches the shores of a raw and desolate landscape, a group of six, including Beyah (Safia Oakley Green), Geirr (Kit Young), Adem (Chuku Modu), Ave (Iola Evans), Odal (Arno Luning) and Heron (Luna Mwezi), have struggled across the narrow sea to find a new home. They are starving, desperate, and living 45,000 years ago. First they must find shelter, and they strike out across the tundra and forge towards the distant mountains that promise the abundant caves they need to survive. But when night falls, anticipation turns to fear and doubt as they realize that are not alone.

Others to round round out the cast are Rosebud Melarkey and Tyrell Mhlange as Neanderthal people. 

This was directed with such visualization by Andrew Cumming (shorts and TV). Considering he has no feature film experience, it is amazing of the expertise he has...whether he has an abundance of experience or not. The expressions of the actors simply imbued the emotion that was needed in each and every scene. It was equally penned well by writer Ruth Greenberg (a short).  Again, considering she has zero feature film experience, this script was incredible. The premise of the film actually goes much deeper than the trailer depicts. Sociologically, this was a group of people representing the emotions of different people. The more fearful the individual, the quicker they died--the more they fought to survive, the longer they lasted. Isn't this the way our society seems to run? The only imperfections I could see was that there were a couple of areas of continuity issues, otherwise a powerful story. Are both the writer and director naturals? Not sure, but suffice it to say they should receive more work.The cast was effective and had obvious chemistry between each other. The fact that none of the actors were anything known in the acting realm, actually gave a more realistic approach to the story. 

This isn't a film for all--it has subtitles of a language called Tola. This definitely makes it much more realistic and thus believable. And, there are many areas in script where the actors use a fair amount of expressions to convey communication, so some people might get impatient. But others who can appreciate this approach will revel. It's a very original approach to filmmaking which makes this worthy of the price of admission. 

Out of 4 Stars: 3.5                                    Rated: R                                          98mins.