I’ve simply seen the primary actually good scary film of 2024. It’s known as Out of Darkness and it’s set 45,000 years in the past, in a prehistoric age when the land was “outdated and darkish,” as one of many characters intones over a hearth.

Let me simply say that I love when this occurs, when a cut-above style film emerges out of the dreck-y flotsam of the January/February film season and units the bar for the remainder of the yr. Final yr it was M3GAN. In 2022 it was X (although we needed to wait until March). In 2021, Saint Maud. The all-time instance is Get Out in 2017—a nonetheless unmatched early-year shock (that ought to have received finest image, dammit).

Out of Darkness, which is displaying in restricted theaters, is a survival story: Six Paleolithic characters towards a darkish drive searching them when the solar goes down. And like every good late-night movie, it takes no time to get shifting, although let me first set a couple of issues straight. This debut function from the Scottish director Andrew Cumming is certainly set through the Stone Age, and so the characters converse an (invented) language, one devised with the assistance of a tutorial advisor and translated by way of subtitles. Are you down for 90 minutes of gibberish…or “Tola” (because it’s recognized within the press notes, a mixture of Arabic and Basque and Sanskrit)? I used to be first amused, after which rapidly impressed with the actors’ fluency and dedication. One other factor: the solid—a extremely athletic crew of principally UK newcomers—do put on furs and tote spears, but it surely took me a second to purchase they had been Paleolithic given how comparatively kempt and enticing all of them are.