‘The Dark Gets In’ Review – A Dark Mockumentary With a Twist You’ll Never Guess [Beyond Fest]

At first glance, writer/director Sean Hogan’s The Dark Gets In looks like your average true-crime mockumentary. But the longer this Alice in Wonderland-themed narrative goes on, the more it becomes a dark descent through the looking glass and into the bowels of something uniquely sinister.

Teenage girl Aisling Sullivan (Kezia Cotterrell) has disappeared. Just fifteen years old, she has vanished without a trace. All the doors to the house are still locked. Her phone was left on her nightstand. The home’s security footage shows no one coming or going. It’s a total mystery. Parents Nat (Charlotte Pyke) and Rory (Cameron Lewis) have agreed to be interviewed about their daughter’s disappearance for a documentary. But what the parents don’t know, and what the crew is about to find out, is that there’s a far darker force at play than they ever could’ve imagined.

For the first half of The Dark Gets In, Hogan presents a rather routine mock true-crime horror film. We find the Sullivan family experiencing a ravenous grief as they recount for the audience who their daughter is as a person. They say she’s sweet, innocent, and a performer with an infectious energy. Her best friend and the police support that claim, as do various clips of Aisling. Weeks go by, and Nat begins to turn to the unexplainable to identify what has happened to her daughter, inviting a medium into her life. Rory, the believe what he can see type, feels like he’s losing his wife, too. An overwhelming sadness grips the screen, sucking us in like a black hole. Effective, but nothing new to see here.

Then Hogan drops a midpoint bombshell, and The Dark Gets In transforms from a sad mystery to a gut-wrenching nightmare.

To say much more would spoil the experience of The Dark Gets In. It’s a film that’s best going into completely blind, like entering a theme park haunted house for the first time. I don’t want to ruin the nightmarish ride that is this movie. What I will say, just to give you a tease, is that we learn early on that Nat’s childhood friend was kidnapped and murdered. As a result, she’s been an overprotective mother (hence the security cameras around the house). For her, Aisling feels like her childhood friend all over again. That backstory returns in a big way, and I can all but guarantee it’s not what you think.