Dark Entities: Review

19th April 2023

The year is 1977 and the Wainters have moved into a house that they’ve inherited where something terrible was supposed to have happened many years ago. Husband and wife, Wes (Brandon McLemore) and Vera (Elena Ontiveros) and their son, Ethan (Jackson Lee Turner) are happy to make a fresh start there. However as soon as they move in, they start to see strange things and a dark presence starts to inhabit the house and their lives.

Dark Entities is a supernatural horror movie written and directed by Brandon McLemore which is supposed to evoke many classic movies from the horror genre. Clearly taking inspiration from movies and TV shows such as The Conjuring, Poltergeist and The Haunting of Hill House, this Seventies set horror movie may give its audience what they’re looking for.

Unfortunately, with having so many influences all at once, it feels like Dark Entities may have bitten off more than it can chew. Of course, evoking popular media to influence your own ideas is something that has been done many times before. However, Dark Entities borrows so heavily from these properties that it feels like nothing is original.

There’s also a lot of inconsistencies in what exactly is happening to the Winters family and in most cases where audiences may be put on edge as characters go where they shouldn’t, it feels like this family would have solved all their problems if they just left.

However, that would mean that there would be no movie to make, so despite all lines of logic the family just seem to let things happen to them. It almost feels like they were contractually obliged to fulfil their parts in a horror movie despite not directly knowing that they were in one.

For such a low budget movie, there must be some things that should be forgiven. Things such as using white sheets for ghosts and having to rely on amateur actors to provide the scares in their performances.

However, being around two hours long really slows down the pace, giving the audience more unintentional laughs in the movie than intentional scares.

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