A Dark Song

A Dark Song is a 2016 Welsh-Irish-British independent horror film, written and directed by Liam Gavin and starring Steve Oram and Catherine Walker.

A bitter and grieving Sophia Howard rents an isolated house in rural Wales to convince short-tempered occultist Joseph Solomon to lead her in a grueling, months-long rite dictated from The Book of Abramelin to summon her guardian angel, whom Sophia can then ask to speak with her dead seven-year-old son.

Solomon explains that once they begin, if they leave the house before the ritual is finished, they will be in grave peril, and that Sophia must endure months of punishing exercises in which they will deal with real demons and angels.

He discloses that he will ask the angel to make him invisible for the rest of his life, to be away from people as he “want[s] some quiet before the howl.” As Solomon soldiers on with the wound, Sophia begins seeing and hearing menacing presences in the house, including the voice of her son.

Its consensus reads: "A Dark Song offers atmospheric, unsettling horror — and marks writer-director Liam Gavin as one to watch.

"[5] Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film is a "classy effort throughout, from cinematographer Cathal Watters' beautiful vistas of the rugged Welsh landscape to Ray Harman's spare, brooding, dread-filled score.

Oram's typically sour, surly, slyly comic performance also grounds the plot in a grubby realism that serves its more fantastical elements well.

But once A Dark Song starts delving into issues like love, loss, faith, and the natural human reaction to sudden tragedy, that's when it blossoms from a novel concept to a truly powerful piece of genre filmmaking.