A couple on a trip through the Irish countryside find themselves hunted by a bog creature who only attacks at night.
Director Conor McMahon has been moving up in the world of horror over the last decade. He was the first recipient of a new funding scheme from the Irish Film Board, and this allowed him to make the successful zombie film "Dead Meat" (2004). He really caught people's attention in 2012 with "Stitches", a horror-comedy with a bigger (yet still small) budget that was picked up by MPI and Dark Sky. With "From the Dark" (2014), he is again working with Dark Sky, and possibly releasing his best film yet...
For "From the Dark", he may have found his muse. Niamh Algar is a Dublin-based actress from Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland. In 2014, she graduated from the Programme for Screen Acting at Bow Street (formally known as The Factory), a program led by directors John Carney, Shimmy Marcus, Kirsten Sheridan, Lance Daly and casting director Maureen Hughes. She is not only a great actress, but capable of some impressive physical feats -- she both swims and boxes.
The film has been described as "taut", and that is not a bad summary. The two best things about this are the cinematography and the simplicity. The cinematography covers all the bases, from nice wide landscape shots of the Irish countryside (a special treat for those of us foreigners) to very close, very claustrophobic filming in the dark. The variation in styles really gives the film a broad range.
But then we also have the simplicity. For almost half the film, Algar's character is alone and in the dark. She has no one to bounce lines off of and must present herself with facial expressions. This is an actor's dream and nightmare. Luckily, she pulls it off with flying colors and is now poised for bigger roles. (Hopefully she does not abandon us horror folk, though).
