This Unnerving Horror Movie Twists Reality Into a Lovecraftian Head Trip

Vast and isolated settings of the woods are often used in the horror genre, easily being able to elicit a gnawing discomfort and uneasiness. Lovely, Dark, and Deep may start by capitalizing on the spookiness of the woods, but gradually it spirals into an unfathomable fever dream that invokes just as much terror as hopelessness. Teresa Sutherland‘s debut feature doesn’t bother dipping its toes into cosmic horror, and instead dives headfirst into unknowable terrors that lurk deep within the shadows of the forest and the corners of Lennon’s (Georgine Campbell) mind. Purposefully dredging up old traumas by returning to the site of it, Lennon slowly devolves from the plucky protagonist who easily traipses her way around the national park to the harrowed shell of a person who cannot differentiate reality from the more sinister imagery. We tumble down this rabbit hole beside her, braced for the haunting visuals and chilling ending.

‘Lovely, Dark, and Deep’ Spirals Into a Fever Dream

Lovely, Dark, and Deep follows Lennon taking on the job of a park ranger at the Arvorus National Park, heading deep into the formidable woods that was the place her sister went missing when she was younger. Even in broad daylight, the twisting paths and dizzying heights make the location an unsettling place, already sowing the seeds of the turbulence to come. Hiking by day and camping by night, Lennon fills her days with mundane park ranger duties while ardently listening to podcasts that chronicle theories about disappearances in the woods. Right up until she is startled in the night by an intruder leading to her first missing persons case and search party.

Dramatic orchestral strums accompany the shift into mind-befuddling terror, as nightmarish visuals seep into reality and, and Lennon is unable to distinguish between the two. Dutifully locating the missing person ended up being Lennon’s downfall, as the somewhat refreshing forests begin to cave in around her, creating a hallucinatory hellish landscape. An incomplete version of the mantra the park rangers put forward in the first scene, echoes ominously around the woods: “Leave nothing. Take nothing. Kill nothing.” But it seems that the woods do not operate by these virtues, leaving worried loved ones, taking lone guests, and killing hope.

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The title of the film comes from a poem by Robert Frost, with its final stanza reading:

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

With Lennon’s return to the woods marking her desire to reconcile what happened to her sister, or perhaps even find her, her journey into the woods and her grief is miles long before she can find any inner peace. As such, the bizarre and heart-racing events of the film encapsulate her passage through grief and trauma, filled with miles of emotional distress and mind-bending revelations.

‘Lovely, Dark, and Deep’ Is Most Horrifying When It Is “Normal”

What makes Sutherland’s disturbing atmosphere so effective is the normalcy that pervades the delusions we see in Lovely, Dark, and Deep. While there are some memorable and surreal visuals like the bark growing out of a park ranger’s face, as nature and humanity amalgamate in a grotesque way, the nail-biting tension and horror comes from more mundane hallucinations. One particularly mind-splitting one is when Lennon’s doppelgänger appears and talks to her in an instructional commercial-like voice with vibrato undertones, while turning around and shooting someone at point-blank range. There is something deeply disconcerting and confronting about seeing yourself plaintively shoot someone with a smile on your face. This is amplified by the jarring dissonance in Campbell’s performance between the two characters, with lines of fear etched into Lennon’s face and a mechanical smile plastered on her mirror image.

Most of the terror doesn’t rely on gimmicks or jump scares, instead the illusions simply move onto the screen, exploiting the already churning dread in the air. Each surreal element of the head trip fluidly moves into another, twisting into this strange and malevolent choreography. From finding an underwater hellscape to joking around with her father in a vacant bathroom, each bizarre occurrence results in more unease. The real power of this kind of fear stems from us intrepidly waiting for the other shoe to drop. It feeds off the uncanny sort of fear, where seemingly normal images are rendered eerie simply by shifting one aspect of it, and in Lovely, Dark, and Deep, the part that is manipulated is how we view the visuals. Our first instinct when perceiving the image is to question whether it is real or not and that terrifies us.

Georgine Campbell Guides Us Through This Manic Nightmare

With very limited characters, the film hinges on Campbell’s performance as the decaying Lennon, and she certainly steps up to the plate. Appearing in multiple critically-acclaimed horror movies in recent years, with her latest role in The Watchers, Campbell is slowly exhibiting how versatile fear can be. Drawing on the apprehension and trembling fear she used in her leading role in the unsettling Barbarian, Campbell is able to harness the already building tension in the atmosphere and deliver a performance the elevates it to a mind-numbing level. She brings nuanced layers of depth into Lennon’s character, allowing for a believable descent into what Lennon initially perceives as madness as she buckles under the debilitating pressure of her own trauma and the woods.

While Campbell enhances how Lennon is received, the character creation is also evidently compelling. Lennon’s motivations for returning to the woods are never explicitly divulged, but we know it has something to do with finding closure for herself after losing her sister many years ago. She begins fairly confident, with her dark secret lingering underneath her expressions, but her reliability and hardiness as a ranger shines through. When we do learn about the root of her pain, it does become unsettling that she was so comfortable traversing the site of her sister’s disappearance in the beginning, speaking to how effective she is at compartmentalizing. As such, her visceral deterioration becomes all that more frightening, as fear and bafflement quickly become commonplace on her face, and we are forced to writhe under the tension alongside her. While Lennon’s backstory is never fully realized, the ambiguity still evokes a hollow sort of anxiety, leaning into the more cosmic horror aspect of the film.

Lovecraftian Horror Is Used in ‘Lovely, Dark, and Deep’

Much of this feverish terror can be attributed to Lovely, Dark, and Deep‘s cosmic horror roots. There are clear parallels between the film’s handling of strange events and H.P. Lovecraft‘s philosophy on “the fear of the unknown.” As mentioned previously, the woods are a popular location for films in this genre, and similar to the ocean, the scary element of it often lies in its ability to isolate people and its vastness. And thus the unknowable aspect of the woods is conjured, reminiscent of the quote: “If a tree falls in the forest, but no one hears it, did it really fall?” Except in Lovely, Dark, and Deep, when a person goes missing everyone hears about it, but only theories and failed search parties follow its wake. The podcasts Lennon listens to almost feel like “creepypasta” stories, and are, ironically, the most reliable information we have on these unknowable spirits.

As such, Sutherland combines cosmic horror and the setting of the woods to construct a bizarre entity that snatches people yet holds no true tangible form that is accessible to us mere humans. The Lovecraftian gaps in the entity’s story facilitate the film’s ability to operate beyond any internal logic, allowing the ultimate head trip to come into fruition. Paired with Sutherland’s precise and crisp cinematography, the result is a compounding and confusing illusion that is delivered in carefully preened packaging that worms its way into our minds, content to haunt us from there. The film is happy to leave us questioning the existence of the potential spirits that reside throughout the forest, with its foremost goal being to make an impression on audiences. However, for those who adore subtext and commentary, there is a possible interpretation that evades the cosmic horror of it all.

If the idea of basking in the uncertainty of it all doesn’t satiate you, seeing the lurking presence in the forest as a personification of Nature itself may be exciting. The opening scene sees an anonymous ranger who disappears and leaves behind a note that crudely reads: “I owe this land a body.” Worded this way, it’s almost as if each hiker the forest whisks away acts as a repayment for the natural resources humans take from the land. Or in a darker mood, it is a form of vengeance for humans exploiting the land. As such, by saving a missing person, the reparations remain unfulfilled until a sacrifice is made. This sort of interpretation is supported by the aforementioned repeated mantra, which is fully spelled out as: “Leave nothing but footprints. Take nothing but memories. Kill nothing but time.” This further implicates humans’ interference with the natural world as the basis for the strange events in the forest. But whether you view the movie through the Lovecraftian perspective or the metaphorical one, the outrageously bold and logic-defying film is guaranteed to make your head spin while assaulting it with profound terror. As such, through haunting visuals, a compelling performance, and its cosmic roots, Lovely, Dark, and Deep is able to create undulating suspense and fear that transform into a feverish nightmare.

Lovely, Dark, and Deep is currently available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.

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