There are horror films that scream, and there are horror films that whisper softly while locking you in a damp Welsh mansion and forcing you to self-flagellate in the name of spiritual growth. A Dark Song, Liam Gavin’s grimly beautiful 2016 debut, is the latter — an occult procedural that feels like The Exorcist’s introverted cousin who spent too much time on esoteric Reddit forums.
It’s not a jump-scare buffet. It’s a slow-burn séance about grief, guilt, and the kind of religious discipline that would make even the Pope call for a union break. It’s brutal, meditative, deeply unsettling — and, somehow, also darkly funny in the way that only movies involving urination revenge, demonic bureaucracy, and blood-based smoothies can be.
The Setup: When Therapy Just Won’t Do, Summon an Angel
We meet Sophia Howard (Catherine Walker), a woman so hollowed by grief she looks like she’s already halfway to the afterlife. Her son’s been murdered, and regular human coping mechanisms — therapy, yoga, even wine — just aren’t cutting it. So, in true horror heroine fashion, she decides to summon her guardian angel via a months-long occult ritual ripped straight from The Book of Abramelin, a 15th-century manual for people who think “grueling isolation and voluntary starvation” sound like a spa weekend.
To do this, Sophia hires Joseph Solomon (Steve Oram), a chain-smoking, whiskey-chugging occultist with the bedside manner of a drill sergeant and the hygiene of a man who’s lived too long near sulfuric energies. Solomon warns her: once the ritual begins, there’s no leaving the house. No phone calls. No Amazon deliveries. Just endless prayer, self-purification, and the very real possibility of demonic torture.
Sophia agrees, because she’s grieving and possibly British enough to think this qualifies as “stiff upper lip.”
Spiritual Cleansing, or Why Self-Help Books Don’t Include Demons
Once locked inside, the pair begin a months-long ordeal of ritual purity, which involves everything from isolation diets to bloodletting to prolonged spiritual humiliation. It’s like a satanic CrossFit program — all discipline, no results.
Solomon is a nightmare roommate: short-tempered, condescending, and prone to cryptic muttering about “energies.” Sophia, meanwhile, is determined but brittle, her desperation radiating through every restrained gesture. Their relationship quickly devolves into psychological warfare. He demands obedience; she demands results.
The film’s black humor lies in these power struggles. When Solomon manipulates her into undressing under the guise of “ritual purification” and then confesses it was just for his own release, Sophia exacts revenge by urinating in his breakfast. It’s petty, disgusting, and profoundly satisfying — proof that even in the face of cosmic horror, human spite remains undefeated.
As the days blur into months, the pair oscillate between hostility and intimacy. There’s no romance — only mutual misery, like coworkers on a doomed project run by Satan. It’s horrifyingly relatable.
The Art of Suffering: Grief with a Side of Penance
The brilliance of A Dark Song is that it’s not really about demons. It’s about the hell of being trapped with your own pain — and someone equally damaged trying to fix it through supernatural bureaucracy.
Sophia doesn’t want peace. She wants revenge. When Solomon finally breaks her, demanding honesty, she admits she doesn’t seek divine forgiveness — she wants the angel to murder the man who killed her son. It’s a gut punch, and suddenly all her quiet devotion feels monstrous. She hasn’t been seeking enlightenment; she’s been weaponizing grief.
That’s when the real horror begins.
Solomon “rebirths” her by drowning her in the bathtub, reviving her in a grotesque act of forced purification. Moments later, she accidentally stabs him — which, to be fair, might be the first authentic moment of catharsis she’s had in months. He doesn’t die right away; instead, he interprets the wound as a good omen. (“Pain means it’s working,” he groans, which could also describe this entire film.)
As he festers from infection, demons begin scratching at the walls, whispering through the pipes, and stalking Sophia in the night. Whether they’re real or psychological doesn’t matter — they’re inevitable. The ritual has become a mirror for grief itself: endless, consuming, and impossible to finish cleanly.
Solomon: The Patron Saint of Terrible Mentors
Steve Oram’s Solomon is one of horror’s great misanthropes — a man so damaged he can only function in the rigid geometry of ritual. He’s part mystic, part drunk uncle, and part bureaucrat of Hell. He swears, berates, bleeds, and occasionally dispenses wisdom in between gulps of tap water that probably isn’t holy anymore.
He’s also hilariously blunt. At one point, when Sophia complains about the ritual’s length, he barks, “You can’t microwave enlightenment.” It’s funny in that dark, despairing way that only British occultists can pull off.
His eventual death — quietly, from infection and exhaustion — feels less like a climax and more like a resignation. He’s been undone not by demons, but by the limits of his own faith. It’s as though the ritual consumed him before it even began.
The Descent: All Hell Breaks Loose (Politely)
With Solomon dead and no clear instructions left behind, Sophia finds herself truly alone — and that’s when A Dark Songbecomes terrifying.
Demons appear. Not CGI monstrosities, but nightmarish, shadowy figures — hunched, whispering, with the wet awkwardness of something that shouldn’t exist in our dimension. They drag Sophia into the basement, torture her, and slice off her finger — a punishment as intimate as it is horrifying.
But just when the film seems poised for total despair, it pivots. The basement fills with light. A massive angel — towering, armored, radiant — manifests before her. And here’s the miracle: it’s beautiful. Not ironically, not grotesquely — genuinely awe-inspiring.
Sophia kneels, bloodied, trembling, and instead of asking for revenge, she asks for the power to forgive.
And that’s the twist. All this ritual, all this agony, all these demons — they weren’t obstacles. They were steps toward surrender. The angel doesn’t speak. It simply nods, a gesture so simple it lands like thunder.
It’s the most quietly profound ending in horror cinema: grace delivered without sermon, redemption granted without words.
Symbolism, Grime, and the Glory of Minimalism
Gavin’s direction is minimalist but potent. The house becomes a character in itself — creaking, claustrophobic, soaked in stale water and quiet madness. There’s no glossy editing or flashy jump cuts, just oppressive realism. You can almost smell the mildew and desperation.
Visually, the film feels like a devotional painting filtered through mold. The colors are cold, the lighting dim, and yet every frame hums with purpose. This isn’t The Conjuring’s polished Gothic; it’s the kind of horror that crawls under your skin and stays there, quietly chanting Latin.
Thematically, A Dark Song nails what most possession films miss: that true evil isn’t outside us — it’s within our grief, our ego, our refusal to forgive. The devil doesn’t have horns; he has human pain management issues.
Catherine Walker: The Saint of Suffering
Walker carries the film like a martyr in jeans. Her performance is raw and restrained — grief distilled into every small gesture. You believe her devotion, her fury, her exhaustion. By the end, when she stands before the angel, she’s unrecognizable: purified by trauma, transcendent in defeat.
Her chemistry with Oram is electric in the worst possible way. They don’t like each other, but they need each other — a codependent spiritual hellscape that makes every argument sting.
Final Verdict: 9/10 — A Beautiful, Miserable Miracle
A Dark Song is not a film for everyone. It’s slow, punishing, and allergic to cheap thrills. But if you stick with it, it’s transcendent — a horror film that earns its darkness and its grace.
It’s about grief, forgiveness, and the grueling bureaucracy of faith — what it costs to speak to the divine, and what it takes to listen.
Yes, it’s bleak. Yes, it’s slow. But in the end, it rewards you with something rare: a horror movie that dares to believe in redemption.
So if you ever feel like life has wronged you, and you’re tempted to summon an angel for revenge, let A Dark Song be your guide. Just remember: forgiveness may save your soul — but it won’t save your carpet.
