We Summon the Darkness (2020)
91 min.
Release Date: April 10, 2020 (Digital & VOD)
The "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s—when fear-mongering fundamentalists accused heavy metal music for being the work of the devil—and evangelical hypocrisy are clever fodder for a wickedly fun comic-horror banger like “We Summon the Darkness.” Director Marc Meyers (2020’s “Human Capital”), screenwriter Alan Trezza (2015’s “Burying the Ex”), and the enthusiastic cast do set up amusing interactions within two metalhead groups before any blood is shed and the realization that the film hinges upon a deceptive plot rug-pull, which isn't too surprising but then lightly subversive nonetheless. Even if there's really not much to it, anyone who likes crimped hair metal with their satanic slashing will find “We Summon the Darkness” to be an oddly likable party romp.
Shutting out the news of teens being slain by a satanic cult all over the country in 1988 (when Judd Nelson was still considered sexy), smoky-eyed babes Alexis (Alexandra Daddario), Val (Maddie Hasson) and Beverly (Amy Forsyth) make their way through Indiana to a heavy-metal rock concert. On the road, the girls get hit with a milkshake by a trio of dudes in another van, but in the parking lot of the concert, they quickly make friends with Mark (Keean Johnson), Kovacs (Logan Miller) and Ivan (Austin Swift). After the concert, Alexis invites them back to her father’s place for an after party. It’s all fun and drinking games before everything goes sideways.
As a retro slasher throwback with heavy-metal counterculture as a backdrop, “We Summon the Darkness” lands somewhere tonally between 2016's goofily over-the-top "Deathgasm" and 2019's speechlessly brutal "Lords of Chaos." It flips expectations of where the story is headed and how roles are reversed twofold in terms of who the predators and prey are in this horror-movie scenario and what one side represents. Even if the predators here aren't physically wearing masks, their extremist mission is ironically a false flag representing a different group of extremists. Once the gradual shift in power clicks with tension and the jig is up around the thirty-minute mark, the film then admittedly runs out of creative juice as a cat-and-mouse thriller. With our antagonists and protagonists eventually on different sides of a door, like a “Green Room” situation, and a few uninvited guests joining the party to become collateral damage, the proceedings are kept lively enough by the personalities in power, while simultaneously growing routine and even a little static.
Subverting her sweet screen presence in pre-Hot Topic leather, a game Alexandra Daddario (2017's "The Layover") sells the foxy role of Alexis with a devilish glint and rage in her piercing blue eyes. Maddie Hasson (2017’s “Novitiate”) is killer, too, commanding attention in every scene she’s in with an excitable, come-hither giddiness as Val, the ruby-lipped sexpot of the trio with an overactive bladder and an ill-advised fondness for too much hairspray. Although she’s not afforded the same kind of energy as her cohorts, Amy Forsyth (2018’s “Hell Fest”) is still appealing as the more-grounded, conscience-heavy Beverly. Keean Johnson, Logan Miller, and Austin Swift (Taylor’s brother) do what they have to do as Guys #1, #2 and #3, but this picture belongs to the ladies all the way. Also, an against-type Johnny Knoxville has a pivotal role that proves to be rather inconsequential as televangelist Pastor John Henry Butler.
If things had just been kicked up a notch, "We Summon the Darkness" could have really taken off as a midnighter to remember. The house just isn’t interestingly implemented into the violent action, confining the majority of the story to just a couple of rooms. Then again, at least a cover of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” is shrewdly used as a source cue, playing at full volume on a cassette tape during the big showdown. Lacking a certain inventiveness in its staging of the hell-raising, “We Summon the Darkness” still entertains with a gleefully unhinged gusto.
Grade: B -
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