[Fantastic Fest 2023 Review] ‘Out of Darkness’ is a Harrowing Masterclass of Historical Fiction

Edited to add the new name. When originally reviewed at Fantastic Fest, the film was called The Origin.

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Director Andrew Cumming certainly didn’t give himself the easiest of challenges with his feature directorial debut Out of Darkness. Set 45,000 years ago, the film follows a group of Paleolithic humans as they navigate the horrors of a newfound world, a task that resulted in tons of research and the help of a Paleolithic Archaeologist named Dr. Rob Dinnis. In order to keep the narrative as grounded and real as possible, Cumming also enlisted the aid of Dr. Daniel Andersson, a poet, historian and multi-linguist who ultimately developed a language he dubbed The Origin Language (TOLA) for the film. The language mixed Arabic with Basque vocabulary, which, in turn, helped inform the production design by Jamie Lapsley to create tools and the technology employed by these early humans. 

To say Out of Darkness is a labor of love would be an understatement, given the complexities of navigating a survival horror story separated by multiple millennia from 2023.

It begins with the sweeping cinematography of Ben Fordesman (Saint Maud), the camera sailing over water towards a campfire, the only light in an otherwise dark and desolate beach. A group of early humans sit around the flames, keeping warm and sharing stories. Adem (Chuku Modu) leads the ragtag group that consists of his very pregnant wife Avé (Iola Evans), his son Heron (Luna Mwezi), his younger brother Geirr (Kit Young), an old man named Odal (Arno Lüning) and a “stray” named Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green). The group sailed across a sea to find a new home, but they arrive in this new, haunted land starving and with a sense of creeping desperation that has already pushed the group to its breaking point before the true horrors even begin. 

Adem leads the group with an iron claw, judging his companions based on their usefulness to the group and it’s clear from the beginning that Odal and Beyah are only there in case the other dies. His wife, meanwhile, is carrying his baby and that seems to be the only connection he has to her, a point that’s driven home when Beyah has her first period and Avé matter of factly tells her she now has another purpose for Adem. It’s a dangerous and heartless world, governed by cruelty and brutality. 

The script by Ruth Greenberg (Story by Andrew Cumming & producer Oliver Kassman) takes typical archetypes and then sets them on a collision course as Out of Darkness becomes not only a narrative about man versus nature and man versus the unknown, but also man versus themselves. The characters are all foils to each other, from Adem’s cruel attitude towards humanity and his brother’s less toxic traits to the pregnant and world-weary Avé and the naive Beyah. Meanwhile, Odal wields religion and superstition like a weapon to stoke the group’s fears. In one of the more interesting conversations that tackles one of the themes of the film, Odal talks of demons and that the land they find themselves in is old and dark. Adem, ever the alpha male, tells his son he’ll be the light that will illuminate the land.

“The danger in bringing light to a dark place,” Odal ominously responds, “is that you might find out what lives in the darkness.”

The group wants to reach a distant mountain in hopes they can find a warm cave and some food. The beach and surrounding areas are devoid of life and the soil is inhospitable for plants. As the group begin their march towards the mountain, tensions get even tighter…and then, while tracking, Adem and Geirr stumble upon the remains of a tusked animal lying at the bottom of a cliff. Adem immediately deduces that the creature was forced over the cliff in fear and to not tell the others. Soon, Adem realizes they’re being stalked by something as dark as the night. And when someone is yanked from the campfire one night, the group is galvanized to find their own, discovering true terror on the way. 

What follows is a sense of wrongness that Andrew Cumming and his team push further and further into, utilizing darkness, stunning vistas and foreboding sound design to create tension. The sound design, in particular, is fantastic as it incorporates harrowing, otherworldly sounds complimented by Adam Janota Bzowski’s score. Like Ben Fordesman, Adam worked on Saint Maud and the two of them create an audio-visual narrative that sets the viewer on edge. The score feels ancient but uses techniques of the Industrial genre of music to create sounds that could be diegetic. The result matches the sound effects and score to skin-crawling effect. 

Out of Darkness is a masterclass on how to make historical horror fiction, as well as survivor horror, and all of these pieces come together to create something that feels both timeless and alien.