I’ll be honest, for the first half hour of We Summon The Darkness, I thought I was in for a rough ride. The buildup isn’t the most elegant, and the dialogue is mostly made up of clunky references that only serves to remind you of its 80s setting. Much of it has that stink of the kind of disposable, low budget junk that will come and go without leaving so much as a mild impression on anyone who may have accidentally stumbled upon it while surfing through some random streaming service. But once the plot truly kicks in…it’s still a bit on the clunky side, it gets far more engaging.
Unfortunately, it’s really hard for me to get into the nitty-gritty as to why that is because there is a big reveal that happens at the half hour mark that kicks the plot into gear. Admittedly, it’s a reveal that I saw coming, some of the dialogue and actions that were meant to be foreshadowing weren’t as subtle as I think the filmmakers intended. However, once the rug is pulled out from under you, and you get a full understanding of what is going on, it does get fun. Though, I will have to keep things vague for sake of keeping this spoiler free.
In the start, we meet three girls. There’s Alexis (Alexandra Daddario), Val (Maddie Hasson), and Bev (Amy Forsyth). Alexis and Val have been friends for a longtime, while Bev is a relative newcomer to their little circle, and it’s clear she hasn’t fully gotten into the grooves that Alexis and Val have gotten used to over the years. These three friends go out to a heavy metal concert, and end up meeting a group of boys, Mark (Keean Johnson), Kovacs (Logan Miller), and Ivan (Austin Swift).
After the concert, the girls invite the boys to join them at the house that belongs to Alexis’ father. Once there, they talk, have drinks, and play a game of “never have I ever.” But while all this is happening, the film leans into an infamous phenomenon from the 80s, the “Satanic Panic.” There are reports on the news about a string of murders that have allegedly been perpetrated by devil worshipers. The moral panic from these reports are exacerbated by Pastor John Henry Butler (Johnny Knoxville), a televangelist aiming his scorn at the troubled youth. This backdrop adds a sense of uncertainty to the proceedings that the girls find themselves in.
And that’s pretty much all I can give away, but what I can say about the general vibe of the film is that it basically feels like a lite version of Jeremy Saulnier’s grim and thrilling 2015 film, Green Room. We Summon The Darkness is written by Alan Trezza and directed by Marc Meyers. I was disappointed by Meyers’ last film, My Friend Dahmer, but he handles the intensity in this film fairly well. The tension is well done, the violence is vicious, the sense of escalation and complication is well done, and there are splashes of comedy that often teeters on the edge of being over-the-top, but is reined in just enough to provide a human element to the action that really sells the desperation of the characters.
Daddario and Hasson shine the most in this. They are the ones having the most fun, and it’s hard not to resist their weird, off-beat charms, and the way the film balances the horror and occasional bits of comedy largely rests on their shoulders, and they walk that tightrope really well. The rest of the cast plays things very straight, which works well enough considering the dangers they face. Knoxville playing a televangelist sounds like an off-the-wall casting choice that is so bizarre that it just might work. Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite have enough screen time for me to strongly say whether it’s effective or a miscast.
We Summon The Demons is a perfectly serviceable genre exercise. If I had one wish, it would be that the filmmakers were more adventurous with the ideas they wanted to play with. It touches on some interesting themes on how cults prey on the vulnerable, the way conservative institutions use scapegoats to blame societal ills, but the moments where the film dwells on these ideas are brief and mostly incidental. And for a film that deals in heavy metal culture, I wish it carried itself with the spirit of that subculture instead of taking a more reserved, less stylized approach. But as is, it’s a modestly entertaining distraction.