THE DARK HOURS

D. Paul Fox :: Canada 2005 :: 80min :: 35mm :: Calder Road Films
Kate Greenhouse, Aidan Devine, Gordon Currie, Iris Graham and Dov Tiefenbach

WINNER -- Best film, best actress -PUCHON FANTASY FILM FESTIVAL

Warning: This film will tear your heart out. Dr. Samantha Goodman is a psychiatrist in her late thirties, dealing with what could politely be described as a life-altering situation. Hoping to get her mind together, she decides to spend the weekend at a winter cottage with her husband and sister. All chances of healing are shattered when a brutal sex offender and former patient of Dr. Goodman's arrives to take the group hostage in the center of oblivion. He is a hypodermic needle dripping with controlled hate, and together with his protégé, he will force the family to partake in a cruel series of "games." Games designed to punish… and reveal.

In spite of the genre reaching popular heights not seen in two decades, it has become increasingly rare to encounter a genuinely hard-edged horror film, let alone a Canadian one. With THE DARK HOURS, Paul Fox has brilliantly reworked a vicious horror subgenre that was a staple of the subversive '70s, creating an engrossing film that is equally intelligent, moving and ferocious.

It is a harrowing portrait of psychological mutation in the face of physical decay, anchored with strong, authentic characters and themes of conscience and ethics. Fox infuses the proceedings with a subtly surrealistic nightmare tone that gets increasingly distorted throughout the film's duration, hitting the finale in a smoldering state of quiet, bloody dementia. The direction, writing, performances and use of sound are stellar.

This film conveys a white-hot sense of trauma that few manage to achieve and, at times, it is almost unbearable in its intensity. Much like his idols Polanski and Roeg, Paul Fox is a filmmaker unafraid of dark, atypical cinematic truths.
— Mitch Davis, FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL

“The play-off between the film’s austere look and remote setting and the fury with which each life is torn apart makes for a genuinely thrilling thriller.” -DEAD BY DAWN