The first horror feature for Berkley Brady, Dark Nature feels like standing in a pool with your toes barely touching the bottom, knowing that you can’t swim. I can’t find a better way to explain this raw and dark exploration of trauma and violence, a horror in more ways than one…Dark Nature is a visceral experience in the best and worst ways. A labor to get through if you’ve experienced trauma in a similar way, the way that Berkley Brady has written and captured episodes of PTSD on screen, and how the actresses perform them feels too real. It’s raw and unsettling, with a shifting perspective of reality that adds chaos to the trauma. If there is a movie this year that has made me want to crawl out of my skin, it’s this one. A true testament to Brady’s understanding that horror is sometimes a real experience, and fruitful ground for cultivating a larger narrative. Not to mention a twisting final act that is better left unspoiled.
Trauma is a starting point for numerous horror films for a few reasons, and highest among them is that it creates stakes with a survivor who’s about to face some new nightmare. The best use it as more than just a jumping off point and instead integrate the experience into the fight for survival that’s yet to come. Dark Nature succeeds on that front and more, and while it hits a few snags the end result is still an engrossing and exciting horror film.
Admitting that one of “Dark Nature’s” genres is melodrama, Brady also wanted to explore the complexities of a friendship on the verge of a breakdown.
“I know that people sometimes perceive melodrama as a dirty word, but I love Douglas Sirk, ‘Beaches.’ I love to be moved,” she says.
“Thinking of my own experiences and traumas, which are woven into this too. I was such a bad friend [when I was dealing with them]. But my friends still got me through it.”
“What a paradox – you become this drag and a bummer, and they still put up with you, even though it hurts everybody. Care can also drag you down, but these women choose each other. I love that.”