Maiden Woods is a small, isolated town surrounded by forest. We start off with a team of loggers that goes missing, and when the foreman tries to find out what happened to them, he encounters the body of one of them. Or, that is…a part of it. Upon finding a severed arm, he is then attacked and killed by some kind of unseen monster. Later, Paul Shields who is the sheriff in town goes together with Donny Saunders, his new deputy from New York, to speak to a farmer who insists that one of his horses has been stolen. Paul believes that the horse has simply escaped and decides to not think too much of it, and goes on to pick up his son Adam who will stay at his place for the night. He and his wife, Susan, no longer lives together after their other son, Tim, died in an accident. During the night, Adam claims he’s seen a creature in the back yard, and Paul also hears some strange noises but doesn’t see anything. The next morning, there are large hoof-like footprints in the snow around his house. Shouldn’t be too strange since they live nearby a forest and all that, but what’s quite peculiar is that the footprints appear to come from an animal that walks on two legs. On top of that, the footprints are left all around town. Paul, of course, believes it to be a prank. What else could it be, right? But then he hears about more animals that have gone missing, and the hunters informs him that all the deer and other animals in the forest seems to have left, indicating that some kind of large predator may have come to the area.
Dark Was the Night (released as Monster Hunter in the UK) is a creature feature horror film from 2014 directed by Jack Heller and written by Tyler Hisel. It is loosely based on the story about “The Devil’s Footprints“, a phenomenon that occurred in 1855 in England where people in a small town woke up to find biped hoof prints all over the place in the freshly fallen snow. Also, the title of the film addresses the 1927 blues-folk song Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground by Blind Willie Johnson.
What sets the movie apart from many typical creature feature films, is the focus on mystery-fueled horror suspense during the majority of the playtime. It’s kind of a slow-burn, the monster is lurking in the dark and out of sight and the atmosphere is much more sinister and dark than the simple premise would make you expect. Hiding the monster is actually a good thing here, as it works wonders for creating the creepy tone. Kevin Durand, which was most recently seen in a role in the vampire horror movie Abigail (2024), does a good job on portraying a worn out and drained sheriff who’s had more than enough on his plate as of late, only to be dealing with something quite out of his comprehension.
And night surely is dark in this movie! And the day is…blue. Just as blue as the sheriff who looks like he’s on the verge of a breakdown at any moment. To be honest, I’m not really sure what the deal with the color palette is, but I have a feeling it’s used to somehow enhance the emotional state of the characters, or to provide a feeling of it being chilly since it’s set during the winter time.
Unfortunately, the movie does fall a bit apart during the final moments, mostly due to the rather lackluster reveal of the monster (could have been a cool game boss, but as something scary in a horror movie, not so much), and a somewhat cheesy ending. Overall, though, Dark Was the Night is a decent mystery-fueled creature feature film.
Director: Jack Heller
Writer: Tyler Hisel
Also known as: Monster Hunter (UK)
Country & year: USA, 2014
Actors: Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas, Bianca Kajlich, Nick Damici, Heath Freeman, Ethan Khusidman, Sabina Gadecki, Steve Agee, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum, Billy Paterson, Terry Fiore
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2251281/
