Director: Gaylene Preston
Year: 1984
Country: New Zealand
Alternate Titles: Dark of the Night
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
In a stroke for independence, a young woman buys a car for a road- trip to see her parents only for the car's increasingly odd and creepy behavior to lead her to find out the truth about its strange past and when she learns the dark secret tries to keep it from controlling her.
Overall, this was quite the fun and somewhat enjoyable effort. One of the more fruitful areas about the film is that it does engage in quite a lot of really appealing work to convince viewers the car’s actually haunted. The fact that it’s completely innocuous looking on the outside makes the events that happen within the car all the more frightening. With the strange eerie moaning and the gasping noises from the backseat, despite her being the only one in the car, the continuous incidents she believes has played out. Yet, no one else can corroborate her story or the way it won’t leave her alone to carry on her life and keeps dragging her back into the fray. This all makes for some creepy moments and atmosphere.
The storytelling and direction is nicely handled through the great character work accomplished, making for quite the effective tale. Built as the typically shy, repressed loner who’s finally given the independence necessary with the purchase of the car, her journey here is the central piece of the film. The escalating madness she experiences as the car slowly drives her mad is a great way to add to the chilling vibe. This even intensifies the tension quite nicely as it becomes obvious the car’s personality has started rubbing off on her, with the increasingly erratic behavior and mood changes that signify how she has started getting influenced by the car itself. There’s plenty of that in the final half as well, which brings in some really enjoyable twists and a great final resolution that picks this up nicely.
Now, there are a few flaws to be found. The film isn’t really all that well-versed in offering plenty of jump-scares or a lot of suspenseful moments, but instead, content to play to the slow-burn. This features her going insane over what the cars’ actually doing to her, rather than featuring the ghostly actions driving this along. The film really seems to slow down once she gets to the town and visits her family, which really doesn’t have much in the way of action that generates any kind of excitement in what’s happening; it is so slowly paced that it doesn’t really feature any kind of action. Instead, it’s basically more about her pleading with others to believe her stories and going around to investigate the past. The film doesn’t feature any kind of ghostly actions at all, and some of the activity featured isn’t all that creepy— so it does have some problems to point out.
Overview: ** 1/2/5
There is enough to enjoy with this one if you're willing to go along with it, although it does have some rather big flaws which manage to hold this one back considerably. Give this a chance if you're into these kinds of slow-burn, atmospheric films or are willing to take a chance on it, while those who find these flaws problematic should heed caution with this one.
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