Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on November 11, 2005, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
It’s one of the significant achievements of The Dark Hours that it manages to sustain its grip on an audience while utilizing storytelling tropes that could easily have detracted from the suspense. The terrorized protagonists are neither the most moral nor sympathetic of people, which risked reducing viewer empathy with their plight, and a final-reel twist is of the type that, without giving too much away, has turned many a tense plotline into a shaggy-dog story. Yet the film, a Canadian production opening across the Great White North, both sustains dramatic interest and elicits real shivers, thanks to tightly controlled direction by Paul Fox and writing by Wil Zmak, and a pair of standout performances by leads Kate Greenhouse and Aidan Devine.
Greenhouse plays Dr. Samantha Goodman, a criminal psychologist, and Devine is Harlan Pyne, a former patient who terrorizes Samantha, her husband David (Gordon Currie) and her sister Melody (Iris Graham) in retaliation for past mistreatments. Given the chilly manner in which we see Samantha treat a patient during a review session in an early scene, Harlan’s bad feelings are understandable—but considering the frenzied, violent response of that patient, her distanced manner isn’t surprising. Besides, Samantha has her own mental issues to worry about: Brain scans have revealed that she has a growing tumor, and she travels up to the rural cabin where David is working on his latest book—with the assistance of Melody—to break the bad news to him. Her mental state receives a further blow with her suspicion that David and Melody are having an affair—and then a meek young man named Adrian (Dov Tiefenbach) knocks on their door late at night.
Adrian turns out to be Harlan’s sidekick, and when the older man soon arrives, the two force Samantha, David and Melody to play a series of twisted psychological games in which Harlan makes up all the unpleasant rules. The ensuing scenes of emotional and physical abuse are particularly unnerving because there’s no sense of safety; Fox and Zmak establish early on that the two tormentors are capable of anything, and that they (the filmmakers) won’t flinch when it comes to taking the torturous games to their inevitable ends. A sequence in which Harlan forces Samantha to choose a body part of Melody’s which he will then chop off with an ax is particularly harrowing.
The horrific drama also encompasses a battle of wills between Harlan, who seems almost reasonably put out about experiments that Samantha once conducted on him, and the doctor, who ripostes that the very abnormal behavior he’s now indulging in justified the extreme treatment. There’s nothing didactic in the way the writer and director incorporate this medical debate, since the storyline remains sharply focused on the characters and their individual traumas instead of attempting to make statements about Bigger Issues. Both Greenhouse and Devine forcefully put their roles across, and are well-supported by Currie, Graham and Tiefenbach. With only five key roles, Fox and Zmak keep the suspense bubbling as Harlan forces unseemly truths out of his three not-necessarily-innocent captives.
The more one learns about Samantha, David and Melody under Harlan’s vicious interrogation, the less conventionally likable they may seem. Yet the seeds for all the revelations have been carefully planted in earlier scenes, and the film remains rooted in identifiable if not always laudable human behavior. Then comes the big reveal toward the climax, which throws events into a new light—and leads the film to end on a note that’s more psychologically provocative than emotionally gripping. Yet once again, it’s a twist that has been carefully set up by all that has come before. Like Ginger Snaps (with which it shares makeup FX creator Paul Jones, whose work here is modest yet cringingly effective), The Dark Hours is a Canadian film that demonstrates how familiar conventions can work anew with the application of smarts, strong acting and straightforward craft.
