Dark Entities (2023) Review

Dark Entities (2023) Review

Following a tragic accident in 1977, the three Winters siblings move into the mysterious home they inherited. They soon discover the house holds dark secrets that seek to threaten everything they hold dear. Convinced the strange occurrences are a result of trauma, they seek out logical explanations with little success. They look to the help of a parapsychologist as the supernatural forces become life threatening. With time running out, will they be able to survive the dark entities?

To begin with there was an element of fun to watching DARK ENTITIES as it constantly delights the viewer with no end of spooky and implausible situations. I was reminded me of the Eddie Murphy sketch from his 1983 stand-up comedy flick DELIRIOUS where he jokes about how the family in POLTERGEIST are stupid enough to stay put in a house that obviously has more than bad karma lurking for them within its structure.

However, it soon becomes apparent that nothing with DARK ENTITIES makes absolutely any sense. Witness the scene where a hapless exterminator screams the house down as something unseen attacks him, apparently no one else in the house can hear him, nor indeed sees him flee the house bloodied and running for his life after being told by something unseen to ‘GET OUT’ in a very THE AMITYVILLE HORROR way.

The attic noise that the exterminator came to investigate is so over-the-top – both too loud and far too constant – that you wonder why the three siblings stayed at the house for more than five minutes. And as for the scratching in the attic? THE EXORCIST anyone? Elsewhere there’s a nod to THE CONJURING however this film’s main reference point would be THE SHINING with the older brother going bonkers as he types away at home and investigating what may have caused injury to his younger brother’s neck and so on.

DARK ENTITIES is less its own story and more of a pastiche of classics that have come before it. If you’re up for a lower-budgeted take on Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING which mixes in elements from other classic horror flicks in non-plausible form then DARK ENTITIES is for me. Unfortunately, I found the end result messy, nonsensical and a chore to sit through.

TRAILER