{"id":1147,"date":"2017-04-30T18:38:57","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T18:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commarts.pleather.us\/2017\/04\/30\/a-dark-song-review-a-feature-length-seance-digs-out-the-ouija-board-very-very-slowly\/"},"modified":"2017-04-30T18:38:57","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T18:38:57","slug":"a-dark-song-review-a-feature-length-seance-digs-out-the-ouija-board-very-very-slowly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/2017\/04\/30\/a-dark-song-review-a-feature-length-seance-digs-out-the-ouija-board-very-very-slowly\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A Dark Song\u2019 Review: A Feature-Length Seance Digs Out the Ouija Board Very, Very Slowly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes it isn\u2019t the house that\u2019s haunted; it\u2019s the people inside. That\u2019s certainly the case for \u201cA Dark Song<\/a>;\u201d in writer-director Liam Gavin<\/a>\u2019s debut, a woman is so grief-stricken that she subjects herself to what might\u00a0be the most arduous, drawn-out s\u00e9ance ever captured onscreen.\u00a0Called the Ambramelin, this obscure ceremony is almost as stressful to observe as it is to enact \u2014 Gavin wants us to feel the mental, physical, and spiritual toll it takes on those desperate enough to invoke it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Intially it’s unclear exactly what the Ambramelin might be, but it’s clear the prep involves much more than digging out\u00a0the\u00a0Ouija board.\u00a0In anticipation, Sophia (Catherine Walker) spent nearly half a year abstaining from all sex\u00a0and following a strict diet. Lately she’s only been allowed to eat between dusk and dawn;\u00a0for the next few days, she’ll fast entirely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Soon\u00a0we learn that Sophia is attempting to contact her dead child, although the circumstances of his death remain opaque. That revelation is what persuaded a reluctant and deeply unpleasant spiritualist named Joseph (Steve Oram) to take up her cause; an offer of \u00a380,000 apparently wasn\u2019t enough. <\/span><\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0\u2018The Circle\u2019 Review: Tom Hanks and Emma Watson Star In a Misguided Story of Technology Gone Wrong \u2014 Tribeca 2017<\/a><\/p>\n

Initially, Joseph\u00a0is as skeptical about the prospect of communing with spirits\u00a0as viewers might be. \u201cI\u2019ve done this three times,\u201d he\u00a0tells Sophia. \u201cOnce it worked, twice it didn\u2019t.\u201d As he pours a salt border around the remote house she’s rented in\u00a0Wales, he informs\u00a0his employer that there\u2019s no turning back now.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

S\u00e9ances are rarely given such serious treatment on film. (For what it’s worth, the invention of the Abramelin and its demand for intricate, long-term preparation<\/a>\u00a0is credited to\u00a014th-century Egyptian magician Abra-Melin.) It makes sense that if there could be a kind of pact between the dead and the living, it wouldn’t be taken lightly. Like a binding contract, the Abramelin\u00a0must be carried out by someone of sound body and mind \u2014 a tricky proposition, given that the\u00a0bereaved would be a\u00a0prime target audience. Taking place in stages over six days and demanding an ascetic routine that initially includes the denial of food and water, the process seals off the secluded country estate from the outside world in more ways than one.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0“A Dark Song” attempts to carve out a space for itself in the space between belief and doubt, superstition and knowledge. “Science describes the least of things,” Joseph\u00a0says. “The least of what something is.” Oram makes this figure as detestable as he is knowledgeable, a last-resort guide who cares not for Sophia’s plight. His allegiances are to the Abramelin and himself, not necessarily in that order.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

READ MORE:\u00a0\u2018Awake, A Dream From Standing Rock\u2019 Is A Lesson in Resistance For the Rest of Us \u2014 Tribeca Review<\/a><\/p>\n

Like most films that gesture toward the supernatural, \u201cA Dark Song\u201d fares better at raising questions than answers. Hearing strange noises emanating from other rooms (if not other dimensions) is almost always more terrifying than seeing what\u2019s actually causing the ruckus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether this is consistent with its own logic remains something of a mystery, given how much of his occult knowledge\u00a0Joseph keeps on a need-to-know basis. As “A Dark Song” builds toward its crescendo, individual notes matter less than the dissonant composition they come together to form. The effect is somewhere between a Gregorian chant and a sunn O))) song, as unsettling as it is compelling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Grade: B<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Source: IndieWire film<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes it isn\u2019t the house that\u2019s haunted; it\u2019s the people inside. That\u2019s certainly the case for \u201cA Dark Song;\u201d in writer-director…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":245,"featured_media":1146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-careering"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/107\/2017\/04\/1f64f.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paqOTj-iv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/m2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}