SUPER DARK TIMES (2017)

Studio:       The Orchard
Director:    Kevin Phillips
Writer:       Ben Collins, Luke Piotrowski
Producer:  Richard Peete, Jett Steiger, Edward Parks
Stars:     Owen Campbell, Charlie Tahan, Elizabeth Cappuccino, Max Talisman, Amy Hargreaves, Sawyer Barth, Adea Lennox

Review Score:

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Summary:

A friendship fractures when an unexpected accident takes two teenage boys down darkly transformative paths.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

While hanging out together, teenager Zach Taylor tells his best friend Josh Templeton that he has a crush on their classmate Allison Bannister. The two boys then meet up with fellow high schooler Daryl Harper and Daryl’s middle school friend Charlie Barth. The four of them ride their bikes to a bridge and continue spending the day hanging out.

After a bullying incident on their way home, Josh tells Zach how much he hates stoner John Whitcomb. Zach and Josh briefly stop outside Allison’s house, but quickly bike away when Zach jokingly yells “penis” and Allison’s bedroom light turns on.

When he returns home, Zach’s mom Karen tells him that Allison called. Zach calls her back. Allison invites Zach and Josh to her upcoming birthday party at her friend Meghan’s house.

Zach and Josh hang out with Daryl in the bedroom belonging to Josh’s brother, who is away in the Marines. Daryl annoys Josh by asking to smoke some of his brother’s weed. Josh says no.

Josh shows the other boys his brother’s sword. With Charlie, all of them go to the woods to slice up milk cartons using the sword. Josh realizes Daryl stole some of his brother’s pot when Daryl begins smoking. Both boys become frustrated and an argument breaks out. Daryl becomes aggressive, prompting Josh to pick up the sword. The two boys fall on each other. Daryl ends up stabbed in his throat. He crawls away and soon dies.

Panicking and in shock over the accident, Zach and Josh cover up Daryl’s body with leaves. Charlie has them hide the sword too. The three of them agree to not tell anyone what happened. While ditching Daryl’s bike, Zach punches a wall and breaks his hand.

Zach returns home to find Allison waiting to see him. Zach briefly cries on her shoulder and the two of them nearly kiss. Karen cleans up Zach’s wound, although he later gets a cast.

When Josh doesn’t show up for school, Zach rushes to see Charlie to make sure they get their stories straight. Charlie insists that they shouldn’t have anything more to do with one another.

Josh refuses to answer his door when Zach comes over. Karen tells Zach that Daryl’s mother called looking for Daryl. Zach has a haunting dream involving Daryl and starts thinking he hears students whispering about the boy in the school hallway.

Josh finally allows Zach to see him. The two boys have a tense conversation during which each of them observes the other’s bizarre behavior. Zach says he feels guilty for leaving Daryl in the woods. Josh insists that they cannot return to the scene of the crime.

After falling asleep during class, Zach has a dream in which Allison takes Daryl’s place on the forest floor. Allison and Zach have sex under the sword while Josh watches. Zach becomes concerned when he later learns that Josh returned to school and was sent to the principal after calling a teacher a c*nt.

Zach goes to Allison’s party at Meghan’s. Zach is surprised to see Josh there. Josh presents his brother’s weed stash to Allison as a gift, prompting John Whitcomb to ask if Josh can score more. Josh arranges for John to meet him the next day. Uncomfortable with the scene, Zach leaves.

Allison catches up to Zach outside. Their brief conversation nearly leads to a kiss again, but Zach is unable to make a move.

At school the next day, Zach learns that John Whitcomb died after falling off the bridge.

Allison writes her new phone number on Zach’s cast. While walking Allison home, Zach openly suggests that John’s death might not have been accidental. Allison confesses to having a crush on Zach and invites him into her house. However, Zach stands still and does nothing.

Zach returns to Daryl’s body and discovers it hacked up. He also finds that the sword is missing.

After getting his number from Allison, Zach frantically calls Charlie. Zach presents his suspicion that Josh took the sword and mutilated Daryl’s corpse, and also may have led John to the bridge to push him to his death. Charlie tells Zach he is losing it and asks that Zach never call him again.

Josh comes over to see Zach. After denying any involvement, Josh gets upset and storms away when Zach mentions the missing sword and John Whitcomb.

The next day, Zach goes to Josh’s house and finds it empty. Zach discovers that Josh’s last phone call was to Allison and immediately assumes she is in danger.

Josh brings weed to Allison and Meghan at Meghan’s house. Josh also reveals the sword. After Meghan tries it out, Josh insists that he take a turn with the sword.

When Zach finally arrives at Meghan’s house, he finds Allison tied up with sword wounds and Meghan apparently murdered. Josh locks Zach out of Meghan’s bedroom. Zach reenters the bedroom from outside, unties Allison, and confronts Josh after a chase.

Josh repeatedly hacks at Zach with the sword. Zach stumbles outside where their struggle over the blade continues. A neighbor finally pulls Josh off of Zach as police arrive.

In the immediate aftermath, an ambulance takes Allison away. Zach silently stares at his former friend as Josh sits still in the backseat of a police cruiser. Some time later, Allison eventually recovers and returns to school.

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Review:

Genre film journalists can be quick on the draw when it comes to prematurely identifying, and often misperceiving, contemporary trends.  That’s how we ended up with the debated term “deathwave” to describe emotionally-grounded horror films that otherwise don’t share much in common besides playing the same festival circuits.  Or “post-horror” as an equally dubious alternative to “elevated” when it comes to categorizing the kind of atmospheric arthouse experiences A24 is known for.

I’m hesitant to jump the same gun, so I’ll stop short of trying to concoct a clever label for what I’m about to get into next.  (Though if I dared, it would probably be something along the silly lines of “sinister suburbia.”)  Nevertheless, I believe the feel of “Super Dark Times” can be conveyed by likening it to stylistically similar films that have peppered the indie landscape since somewhere around 2012.

“Super Dark Times” takes place in one of those cinematic suburbs dotted by small town charm, yet dominated by ominously overcast skies.  Strip the supernatural elements and you’ve visited neighborhoods like this in “It Follows” (review here) and “I Am Not a Serial Killer” (review here).  Mute the black comedy and “I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore” might be on the same map.  Picture these places as sleepy ponds slowly poisoned by a murder or a monster.

“Super Dark Times” puts its pushpin into this same geography where directors such as Osgood Perkins, Nicholas McCarthy, Kasra Farahani, even the Coen Brothers pluck their ideas and plant their premises.  As relatable as such environments might be, mood becomes macabre, and initially innocuous actions beget psychologically complex consequences.

“Super Dark Times” starts with a startling scene of two lawmen primitively euthanizing a dying deer injured after breaking through a high school’s window.  Springing instantly to mind is the similar prologue in “The Invitation” (review here), when Will is forced to kill a coyote hit by his car en route to a dinner party.

Both scenes may mildly confuse moviegoers over the necessity of their inclusions.  Like “The Invitation,” the reason “Super Dark Times” begins with this unsettling bang is to fire a shot across the bow warning to prepare for uneasiness ahead.  Act one is about to go through exposition involving average days in the lives of average teens.  But the film wants to first fertilize a subconscious seed that despite outward appearances, nothing is normal and no one should feel completely comfortable.

Best friends Zach and Josh are typical teen boys.  They’re in the twilight of innocent adolescence, still biking to 7-11 for junk food while musing if Silver Surfer is lonelier than The Punisher.  Yet they’re also waxing into more masculine immaturity, pointing at yearbook pictures with fingers identifying which girls they would “do.”

You know the satellites orbiting their circle.  Zach’s crush Allison isn’t so much of a girl next door that she isn’t willing to blaze an occasional joint.  Daryl is a loudmouth tagalong barely tolerated by Josh while Zach maintains a memory of the friend Daryl was when they were younger.

Owen Campbell (Zach), Charlie Tahan (Josh), Elizabeth Cappuccino (Allison), Max Talisman (Daryl), and Sawyer Barth, who plays fourth friend Charlie, are so magnetically authentic, I would willingly watch a feature-length version of their introductory scenes because of how organically engaging they are, even when, especially when, they are being ordinary.  There isn’t any mugging.  Nor is there any unnatural staging.  The actors are so comfortable in their characters, they don’t appear to be cognizant there is a camera at all.  By extension, the viewer comes to forget s/he is watching them on a screen and not through a window.  That is how effectively everyone ropes you into their world.

Excellent production design ices this cake.  “Super Dark Times” is set in the 1990s, but doesn’t scream the era in your ears or your eyes the way “Stranger Things” does with the decade before.  Subtle props and costuming choices read as real as the people and their blue-collar plights, adding one more detailed layer to an already immersive illusion.

In an instant, an unexpected tragedy transforms the friends and their friendships.  Neither their minds nor their emotions are equipped to process what comes next, which sets each person involved down a different path of despair.  All of those paths lead back to one another, and the people they become in the interim are poised for a chilling collision none of them would have ever imagined was possible.

With an iron grip grasp on the personalities and their problems, the film’s strong step only stumbles at the conclusion.  “Super Dark Times” finds its rhythm without exaggerated bells or whistles, until the ending suddenly seeks acceleration from unnecessary artifices such as a slow-motion thunderstorm to accentuate a final fight.  An epilogue from a secondary point of view then punctuates the notion that the resolution doesn’t use the loose ends an audience would most like to see tied.

Yet once invested in the setting as well as the stakes, the classmates’ conflicts, confusion, frustrations, and trauma translate into tension that tightens your muscles with constant anticipation over how these unfortunate lives will be darkened or damaged next.  Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski smartly scripted a disturbing story.  Kevin Phillips’ directing, remarkably assured for a first-time feature, then tunes every element in tandem with his cast to achieve pinpoint precision on an absolutely arresting atmosphere.

“Haunting” is a word tossed around wantonly when describing thrillers with a cerebral edge.  “Super Dark Times” knows precisely what that word means and how to convincingly command it as a quality.  The movie is one of those rare experiences tattooed in your mind’s eye after it is over, truly haunting your head with echoes of its affecting horror.

Review Score:  90

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