We Summon the Darkness

A rollicking B-movie satire about those who truly have blood on their hands.

What really sets We Summon the Darkness apart ... is its joyous - if nasty - celebration of the female rock fan at a crucial point in her development.

The proceedings are not entirely unamusing in their lurid way, but they're also not nearly as clever as the filmmakers believed or hoped they would be.

The twist/reveal happens too early in the proceedings, bursting the mystery bubble and resulting in a long, drawn-out anticlimactic second-half that's disappointingly generic.

It's like a good Blumhouse movie, told in elegantly framed images, and though the situation is extreme, the violent action is staged in a manner that one might describe as the understated version of over-the-top.

"We Summon the Darkness" is fine throughout...

...a palpable misfire that squanders its strong first act.

We Summon the Darkness is a wickedly funny and delicious piece of genre cinema. It's a horror film that doesn't necessarily aim to scare or terrorise us but to take us on a gnarly rollercoaster ride along with its doomed characters.

A story of metalhead (or Satanist?) boys vs. girls in 1980s Christian America; perfect set-up for a slasher, but this is not so formulaic by a long shot.

We Summon The Darkness lacked believable performances, an interesting story, or anything resembling excitement for me, falling into too many clichés to engage.