Dark Beacon

I saw Dark Beacon pretty soon after watching Sinful. Overall, Dark Beacon is a better movie. It’s certainly better looking. But despite a lot of directorial potential, the movie is still a failure. Dark Beacon lacks something even Sinful understood; how to be scary.

Dark Beacon follows a woman named Amy as she tracks down a former love of hers named Beth. Beth is living in seclusion in a lighthouse with her young daughter, Maya. Maya’s father, Christian has died under mysterious circumstances. Once Amy arrives, Beth’s sanity begins to break down. Or, there is now a witness to her pre-existing fragile state. Is Christian’s vengeful ghost the cause of this unrest or just Amy’s own uncertain mental state?

The first act of Dark Beacon is decent. It introduces the characters well. It also successfully establishes that there’s more going on here than meets the eye. What if fails at, even in this, the strongest part of the movie, is establishing why we should care. The characters in this film are pretty bland. Given its setting at a lighthouse, it’s difficult not to compare Dark Beacon to Robert Eggers’ masterpiece of psychological horror, The Lighthouse which was released two years later. That’s a movie that knew how to do tone, buildup and interesting characters.

Dark Beacon consistently falls on the wrong side of mental uncertainty versus plot and character inconsistency. It would be fine if these inconsistencies stayed to one character but they don’t. Maya, Amy and Beth all seem to change personality and motivation scene to scene. While there is perhaps a way to do this right, here it just seems messy. It made it further difficult to care about these characters as it was so hard to get a baseline on who they are and what their motivations are.

Where Dark Beacon really lets itself down is not understanding how to do scares. Actual scares in the film are infrequent and predictable. And despite good cinematography, the film suffers from an absolute lack of tone or mood. Even once Christian’s zombie ghost starts causing havoc, there’s still minimal thrills or threatening atmosphere. There’s no tension in its visuals, even when its visuals want the audience to assume something spooky is happening just off camera. It therefore feels like a lot of characters reacting to nothing or an inept camera operator who’s focused on the wrong thing and full-on misses what’s supposed to evoke fear.

The director of photography and maybe the director themself certainly shows talent for making nice visuals in Dark Beacon. What this movie does not display is a talent for making a good horror movie. Dark Beacon is not scary, thrilling or tense. There’s 60% of an interesting film here but the movie never builds up steam or offers a satisfactory payoff. If you want a horror film that happens in a lighthouse and has some gay elements, just watch The Lighthouse.

Overall rating: 3/10

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