Desperately Seeking Sarah

By AM Saturday, October 9, 2010

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A few nights back we sat down to view a movie about which my wife had read a decent write-up. The Dark was located in the horror genre. It featured Sean Bean who invariably puts in strong performances, although in this one as James he was shaded by Maria Bello playing Adèle.

Unlike much from recent horror industry output The Dark did not rely on the power of special effects but opted for the earlier methods of inducing fright. There were lots of things going bump in the night and appearances of spectral forms to cause the heart to miss a beat. There were times during it when I felt a shiver not only go down my spine but shudder right through me.

Adèle, who has been living in New York, decides to travel to Wales, where her daughter’s father James is a sheep farmer. Apart from the animals his sole companion is an unfathomable shepherd who tends to the flock while the reclusive James takes time out to paint. By making the trip to Wales Adèle hopes to bring some stability to Sarah’s life and remove the turbulence that has adversely affected the mother-daughter relationship.

First signs were ominous and when sheep almost knock Adèle into the sea as they leap like lemmings to the waves below, it does not dawn on her that sheep should not behave like the cliff top departing rodents. If there was a moment to consider a return flight to New York it was then. From that point on fortunes and some other things begin to plummet.

The endeavour to achieve family harmony was destroyed within days when Sarah was lost to the sea. 60 years earlier there had been a mass suicide performed on the hill from which Sarah fell to her death. A deranged but manipulative preacher had persuaded his equally deranged but more gullible congregation that beyond the waves lay the afterlife. At one time the preacher owned the farmhouse where James now lived.

From this point on the film is peppered with the anguished wails of ‘Sarah, Sarah’ from a desperate mother. Sarah’s father leads the hunt for his daughter’s body. Strained by anguish that he had not been at her side when she was lost he wanted to be there for her when she would be found. Tension builds up between him and Adèle because she sketches apparitions while he searches the sea. Their previously traced separate paths continue to diverge.

The mother, clearly unable to come to terms with the loss, retreats into a spooky world where conjuring up people long since dead focuses her mind. She learns from the annals of Welsh mysticism of the supposed existence of a place called the Dark. There she convinces herself is the location of her lost daughter.

When she discovers the sickly teenage Ebril in her daughter’s bed, Adèle becomes convinced that Ebrill knows where her daughter is and how to get her back. Undaunted by being told that Ebrill drowned many years ago, had returned but brought something back with her that was best left at sea, Adèle persists in her quest. But the legend of the Dark is that it only allows a person to be returned in exchange for another. It is clear where the story line is heading.

The film can be hard to follow particularly towards the end. I was never quite sure who made up the living and who were dead. The scenes became so interchangeable that it became impossible to say if they were in the Dark or in the farmhouse.

A viewable if confusing movie there are enough chills and frights throughout to keep the horror aficionado on board to the end of the journey across a dark stretch of unyielding currents determined that what they have they hold.