A Dark Song

A Dark Song is the only film that has ever treated magic as labour, and that single decision makes it the most convincing occult film in the index.

There is no library of forbidden books and no robed figures. There is a rented house, a man with a holdall, a list of materials, a salt line laid around the entire building, and a schedule. Joseph Solomon explains at the outset that the operation takes months, that it cannot be interrupted, that neither of them may step outside the circle until it is finished, and that most of it will be boring, humiliating and physically awful. Then the film delivers exactly that: fasting, sleep deprivation, a week spent in one room, blood taken by the pint, memorised invocations in a language she cannot pronounce, and obedience to a man she cannot stand.

Catherine Walker and Steve Oram are the whole film and they are extraordinary. Walker's Sophia is grief that has calcified into will; she is not sympathetic, she is not honest, and she will not stop. Oram's Solomon is an abrasive, vain, physically unimpressive man who may be a fraud, may be a bully, and is clearly frightened of what he is doing — which is far more persuasive than competence would be.

It is a film about a transaction between two people who are both lying

Sophia tells Solomon she wants to speak to her dead son. She is lying, and he knows she is lying, and the ritual will not work while she is. What she actually wants is the boy who killed Jack dead. The operation's requirement of absolute honesty is the film's structural device, and the midpoint — where she finally says what she came for — is the turn on which everything else depends.

The horror arrives very late and is better for it

For an hour there is nothing supernatural on screen that cannot be read as exhaustion, suggestion or Solomon's manipulation. The film's own position stays open: he is either an occultist or a man extracting money, obedience and eventually sex from a desperate woman. Then the floor shifts, and the last twenty minutes commit absolutely.

Where it is hard going

It is slow in a way that is not a figure of speech — a large part of the film is two people in a cold house being unpleasant to each other. The lower-level sequences near the end are under-lit to the point of illegibility. And Gavin's ending divides viewers sharply, because it asks for a reading of what Sophia has earned.

For the same ritual-as-process patience, The Witch and Kill List; for the same grief producing an occult catastrophe, Hereditary and Midsommar.

The short answer: Sophia stabs Solomon after he demands she submit to a sexual element of the rite, and he refuses to let her take him to a hospital because leaving the circle would void everything; he dies of sepsis over several days, having told her she has to finish it alone. She does. She descends through the house — which now has levels beneath it that it did not have — is hunted, is badly injured, and crawls. At the lowest point she is confronted by something and survives it. Then she climbs, and in the house's upper storey she finds an enormous figure of light standing in the stairwell: her guardian angel, which has been summoned and which will grant her one request. She does not ask for the boy who killed her son to die. She asks for the power to forgive. The film's last shot is Sophia walking out of the house, alive, into daylight.

What is the ritual in A Dark Song?

A long version of the Abramelin operation: a months-long programme of purification, isolation and invocation drawn from a 15th-century grimoire, whose stated end is contact with one's guardian angel and the granting of a request. The film's rules are strict and consistently applied — a salt circle sealing the house, no exit until completion, fasting and bleeding, exact recitation, and total honesty about the request. The procedural fidelity is the reason the film works.

What does Sophia actually ask for?

The power to forgive. Her stated request throughout the film is to speak to her murdered son; her real request, admitted at the midpoint, is for the boy responsible to die. When the angel finally appears and she can have anything, she asks for neither. It is the least cinematic possible choice and it is what the film has been building, because every stage of the ritual has been about what grief turns a person into.

Is Solomon a fraud in A Dark Song?

The film keeps it open for roughly an hour and then answers it. Nothing in the first half requires him to be genuine: the sleep deprivation, the blood loss and the isolation would produce everything Sophia experiences. What settles it is that he dies rather than break the circle — a confidence trickster with a stab wound takes the hospital — and that the operation completes without him. He is a real occultist who is also a liar, a bully and a coward, and the film insists both can be true.

Why does Sophia stab Solomon?

Because he tells her the rite now requires a sexual act, and she does not believe him. The film is deliberately ambiguous about whether this is a genuine stage of the operation or Solomon exploiting her, and Sophia's response is immediate and violent. It is the point at which she stops being a client, and the consequence is that she has to complete a months-long ritual alone with a corpse in the house.

Is the ending of A Dark Song a happy one?

It is a resolution rather than a reward. Sophia survives, the operation works, and she walks out of the house having asked for the only thing that could help her. But her son is still dead, her body is wrecked, she has killed a man, and the film gives her no scene of relief. At 010 on tone this is among the bleakest things we hold, and the ending's grace is specifically that it is not a victory.

Scored against the published rubric, here is what the numbers mean.

Tone 010 is bleak — 17 works score lower. A murdered child before the film starts, a death by sepsis in the middle, and a conclusion whose best outcome is the capacity to stop wanting revenge.

Pace 014 is the joint-thirteenth-slowest in the index — only 12 works are slower. Months pass, mostly in one house, and much of it is two people waiting.

Era bias 076 reads modern — 69 works score lower. Digital capture, a contemporary Welsh setting and a mobile phone that is deliberately surrendered.

The threat at 052 is almost exactly the midpoint, which is right: for most of the running time the danger is a living man, and in the last twenty minutes it is not.

Viscera 034 is low — 40 works score lower. A stabbing, a protracted death from infection, blood drawn repeatedly, and injuries sustained crawling.

Reality anchor 050 is exactly the midpoint. The house is a house until it is not, and the film gives no signal about where the line is.

On jump scares: two, and the film is otherwise built entirely on duration.