← Back to Reviews
in
The Dark Valley, 2014
A man named Greider (Sam Riley) arrives in a small Austrian village on a remote mountaintop, camera in tow. Ostensibly intending to document the villagers, Greider moves in with a widow and her teenage daughter, Luzi (Paula Beer). But soon the toxic dynamics of the village becomes clear, and Greider finds himself entangled with the powerful family who rule the village by fear.
This is a satisfying thriller that makes the most of its isolated, snowbound setting.
Thanks to a prologue sequence and, you know, a general sense of how movies like this work, there aren’t necessarily that many surprises to be had in this film. But even if most of the plot beats are somewhat predictable, the characters and the setting make for an enjoyable thriller.
The setting of the film, an isolated mountainside, does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of building atmosphere. Everything is blanketed in a punishing layer of snow. Not new fluffy snow, but the hard snow that you know has been sitting around for weeks. The isolation and the cold give everything an extra sense of threat. Not only is this a place where no one would find out what happened to you, but even being left alone outside for a few days could be enough to finish you off.
In terms of the characters, Riley plays things pretty close to the chest when it comes to the enigmatic Greider. As a viewer, we can tell he’s after something, but there’s a waiting period where he’s simply absorbing the dynamics of the village. Most of the emotional weight comes from Beer as the teenage Luzi. Luzi is in love with Lukas (Thomas Schubert), and the two very much want to be together. But in this village there is a price to be paid for marriage, and Luzi’s terror---along with Lukas’s own apprehension---drive a lot of the suspense of the story.
And Luzi’s terror is well-founded. What we see through the film is the way that a powerful family--The Brenners---have a total grip over the village. The men of the Brenner family, an elderly father and his bevy of sons, enjoy flexing their power just for the sake of it. As a survival mechanism, the villagers have learned to relent and comply. A few more powerful locals, such as the priest, have willingly become allies and propagandists for the family. A speech given by the priest in which he contorts Biblical stories into gross lessons about submitting to abuse stands out as an infuriating and upsetting moment.
In the second half of the film, things shift a bit more toward action. There are several satisfying sequences once Greider and the Brenners throw down, and the film wrangles a few memorable violent setpieces out of the snowy, creaking woods that surround the village.
The movie does end up being just a hair more muted than I would have liked. So much is obvious from the get-go, that it ends up being frustrating that the movie saves revealing them as “twists”. More time developing relationships between Greider and his host family would have been beneficial, especially as the film moves into the final act.
The Dark Valley, 2014
A man named Greider (Sam Riley) arrives in a small Austrian village on a remote mountaintop, camera in tow. Ostensibly intending to document the villagers, Greider moves in with a widow and her teenage daughter, Luzi (Paula Beer). But soon the toxic dynamics of the village becomes clear, and Greider finds himself entangled with the powerful family who rule the village by fear.
This is a satisfying thriller that makes the most of its isolated, snowbound setting.
Thanks to a prologue sequence and, you know, a general sense of how movies like this work, there aren’t necessarily that many surprises to be had in this film. But even if most of the plot beats are somewhat predictable, the characters and the setting make for an enjoyable thriller.
The setting of the film, an isolated mountainside, does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of building atmosphere. Everything is blanketed in a punishing layer of snow. Not new fluffy snow, but the hard snow that you know has been sitting around for weeks. The isolation and the cold give everything an extra sense of threat. Not only is this a place where no one would find out what happened to you, but even being left alone outside for a few days could be enough to finish you off.
In terms of the characters, Riley plays things pretty close to the chest when it comes to the enigmatic Greider. As a viewer, we can tell he’s after something, but there’s a waiting period where he’s simply absorbing the dynamics of the village. Most of the emotional weight comes from Beer as the teenage Luzi. Luzi is in love with Lukas (Thomas Schubert), and the two very much want to be together. But in this village there is a price to be paid for marriage, and Luzi’s terror---along with Lukas’s own apprehension---drive a lot of the suspense of the story.
And Luzi’s terror is well-founded. What we see through the film is the way that a powerful family--The Brenners---have a total grip over the village. The men of the Brenner family, an elderly father and his bevy of sons, enjoy flexing their power just for the sake of it. As a survival mechanism, the villagers have learned to relent and comply. A few more powerful locals, such as the priest, have willingly become allies and propagandists for the family. A speech given by the priest in which he contorts Biblical stories into gross lessons about submitting to abuse stands out as an infuriating and upsetting moment.
In the second half of the film, things shift a bit more toward action. There are several satisfying sequences once Greider and the Brenners throw down, and the film wrangles a few memorable violent setpieces out of the snowy, creaking woods that surround the village.
The movie does end up being just a hair more muted than I would have liked. So much is obvious from the get-go, that it ends up being frustrating that the movie saves revealing them as “twists”. More time developing relationships between Greider and his host family would have been beneficial, especially as the film moves into the final act.