Some movies make sense. Others make art. And then there’s The Passion of Darkly Noon, a film that doesn’t so much make sense as it makes strange noises in your attic at 3 a.m. Philip Ridley’s 1995 cult oddity is a blend of psychological horror, southern gothic melodrama, and Brendan Fraser screaming into the void with barbed wire wrapped around his torso. It’s a movie where a mute Viggo Mortensen builds coffins in the forest, Ashley Judd glows like a backwoods goddess, and a giant shoe floats by on the river as if dropped by God Himself after He got drunk and fell asleep.
And here’s the kicker: it’s good. Not “normal” good. Not “Oscar-winning” good. But that delirious, sweaty, backwoods, fever-dream good where you don’t know whether to clap, laugh, or call a priest.
Brendan Fraser: God’s Saddest Himbo
Let’s start with Fraser, playing the titular Darkly Noon. Yes, that’s his real name—his parents apparently wanted their son to sound like a Hot Topic candle scent. Darkly is the poor bastard who stumbles out of a collapsed cult with nothing but trauma, Bible verses rattling in his skull, and enough sexual repression to power the state of North Carolina. Fraser leans into this role with all the awkward intensity of a man trying to order Starbucks for the first time.
He spends half the film wide-eyed and sweaty, staring at Ashley Judd like she’s both salvation and sin. And when he finally snaps? He goes all in: barbed wire wrapped around his torso, painted red like a demonic Valentine, shrieking Biblical vengeance while wielding a coffin chisel. Imagine Brendan Fraser as both Jesus and Leatherface, and you’re halfway there. It’s a performance that should not work—and yet, like the movie itself, it’s magnetic in its lunacy.
Ashley Judd: Saint, Witch, or Southern Aphrodite?
Enter Callie (Ashley Judd), who nurses Darkly back to health. She’s sensual, earthy, barefoot, and makes rural cabin life look like an Herbal Essences commercial shot by David Lynch. Callie radiates temptation. She isn’t just a woman; she’s the embodiment of everything Darkly’s puritanical upbringing told him would lead to hellfire. She touches his hand? Sin. She lets her dress fall off one shoulder? Apocalypse. She makes biscuits? Straight to damnation, do not pass Go.
And yet, Judd plays Callie with just enough ambiguity that you’re never sure if she’s a witch, a saint, or simply a woman unlucky enough to live in a house where lonely cult survivors wander out of the woods. The movie frames her as the spark that ignites Darkly’s madness, but she also represents the possibility of tenderness—a possibility he’s constitutionally incapable of handling.
Viggo Mortensen: The Silent Coffin Dreamboat
Then there’s Viggo Mortensen as Clay, Callie’s mute boyfriend. He’s handsome, sweaty, shirtless, and spends his days building coffins like some kind of Appalachian IKEA model. Mortensen doesn’t have a single line of dialogue in the film, which is fine—his jawline does most of the talking.
He’s basically everything Darkly isn’t: comfortable in his own skin, confident without speaking, sexually fulfilled without guilt. No wonder Darkly hates him. Watching Fraser seethe while Mortensen silently flexes is like watching a Sunday school teacher discover Playgirl for the first time.
The Giant Shoe in the Room
Yes, let’s talk about it: the giant shoe. Halfway through the movie, Darkly and Jude (Loren Dean) find a massive clown shoe floating down the river. Do they question it? Do they scream? No, they stick a dead dog in it and light it on fire like some pagan Viking funeral.
And that, my friends, is this movie in a nutshell. Surreal imagery dropped into a melodramatic stew without explanation, daring you to laugh but also daring you to take it seriously. Later, a circus family shows up looking for their missing shoe. It’s never explained. It’s never resolved. It’s just there—like the film itself, a weird, unshakable image you’ll be thinking about three bourbons deep at 2 a.m.
Jude: The World’s Nicest Coffin Salesman
Loren Dean plays Jude, the coffin transporter who finds Darkly in the woods. He’s the film’s accidental comic relief—a soft-spoken guy who hauls coffins around the South like they’re Amazon packages. He suggests he and Darkly run off and live together, which feels less like a romantic proposition and more like someone inviting you to join their Dungeons & Dragons campaign. When he finally returns at the climax with a rifle, he looks like he’s walked in from a completely different movie—maybe Fried Green Tomatoes.
Grace Zabriskie: The Harbinger of Weird
And let’s not forget Grace Zabriskie as Clay’s mother, Roxy. If you’ve ever seen Zabriskie in anything (Twin Peaks, Seinfeld), you know she specializes in playing women who vibrate at the frequency of “haunted tea kettle.” Here she plays the obligatory doomsayer, warning Darkly that Callie is a witch. She’s also the kind of person who would absolutely gossip about demons at a PTA meeting. When she eventually offs herself, it’s less tragic and more like the film finally admitting it couldn’t contain that much crazy in one cast.
Barbed Wire Baptism
The final act is bonkers in a way that makes you sit forward in your chair. Darkly, fully unhinged, wraps himself in barbed wire (because why just sin when you can accessorize?), paints himself crimson, and storms the house where Callie and Clay are mid-coitus. He’s part Christ, part Cenobite, part rejected extra from a Nine Inch Nails video. The result? A blaze of sex, violence, and fire that leaves the cabin in ashes and Brendan Fraser wailing, “Who will love me now?” as he bleeds out.
It’s melodrama turned up to eleven, operatic in its absurdity, and weirdly moving. You don’t sympathize with Darkly—you pity him, a man destroyed not by sin but by the inability to reconcile desire with faith.
Why It Works
By all rights, The Passion of Darkly Noon should’ve been a disaster. The script is part Bible camp fever dream, part southern gothic soap opera. The imagery is surreal bordering on ridiculous. And yet Ridley directs with such conviction that the film takes on the logic of a nightmare: it’s absurd, but it feels true in that warped dream-logic way.
It helps that the performances are all-in. Fraser gives a career-peak meltdown, Judd radiates dangerous sexuality, Mortensen smolders silently, and Zabriskie steals every frame. Add in the bizarre imagery—a dog funeral in a giant shoe, Brendan Fraser in barbed wire cosplay—and you get a movie that’s impossible to forget.
Final Verdict
The Passion of Darkly Noon is not for everyone. If you want coherent plotting and subtle symbolism, run. If you want Brendan Fraser painted red, screaming Bible verses, and attacking Ashley Judd while a circus family looks for their missing footwear, this is your holy grail.
It’s operatic, it’s unhinged, it’s bonkers. And it’s also—God help me—kind of brilliant.
