Having never had the pleasure to talk to or meet Mathieu Turi the only thing I have to know is if he is familiar with The Descent and Deep Fear because his newest film, The Deep Dark takes the best aspects of those films and brings them to the forefront to create a claustrophobic hellscape that is going to make audiences rip off their flesh as they dig into their thighs and arms with sheer anxiety and grit. The movie is so masterfully crafted and woefully suspenseful, that every second of the 103 minute run time is going to have audiences riddled with anxiety, get ready to transport to 1950s France and enter the catacombs of hell, with Deep Fear.
The film focuses on Amir (Amir El Kacem), as he joins the mining crew of Roland (Samuel Le Bihan) and Berthier (Jean-Hugues Anglade) amongst others as they work the mines amply called Devil’s Island. Things are to a rocky start due to social political issues between Amir and the rest of the mining team, but alas after a cave in they quickly put their differences aside to band together to escape the catacombs. What ends up being unearthed and rather stalking the team is something unworldly and creates a tense world for the audience to revel in to have their world haunted and their lives in grave danger.
The Deep Dark takes one of the most dangerous jobs in the world and decides to add a new level of freight and terror to it, something ungodly hunting the crew that is down there. Audiences are met with director Mathieu Turi’s creative choices to have everything relatively poorly lit, or not lit at all in some cases to create a tense world of the unknown and chaos prevails. When audiences get to discover the chaos that awaits the team, the horror truly sets in as it is a creature that simply cannot be described or predicted, truly bringing forth the greatest fear factor of them all, existential dread, and anxiety. The Deep Dark stalks its audience and sinks its teeth into them as they explore the mines of 1950s France’s Devil’s Island and makes it a journey they surely won’t forget.
The Deep Dark screens 7:00PM, Saturday, October 21 at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival! The Canadian Premiere with the Director in attendance! Tickets are available here: https://www.cineplex.com/movie/the-deep-dark-french-west-tadff-2023
