DARK TOUCH (2013)

Studio:       IFC Midnight
Director:    Marina de Van
Writer:       Marina de Van
Producer:  Patrick Sobelman, Jean-Luc Ormieres
Stars:     Missy Keating, Marcella Plunkett, Padraic Delaney, Catherine Walker, Richard Dormer, Charlotte Flyvholm, Stephen Wall

Review Score:

---

Summary:

After surviving a massacre that hills her abusive parents, a young girl struggles to adjust to normalcy with a new family.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Niamh (pronounced Neve) runs from her home to the nearby house of Nat and Lucas Gallin. The Gallins see that the girl is in hysterics, covered in bruises, and has had her tongue bitten. Neve’s parents Henry and Maud come for their daughter, seemingly oblivious as to what caused Neve’s injuries.

Later, the Gallins visit Neve’s family and ask about the girl. While Nat and Lucas speak with Henry and Maud, Neve undresses her newborn baby brother, revealing bruises on his body. As Neve screams from her bedroom window, Nat has a strange ringing in her ear when she and her husband leave to go home.

Neve appears to be physically and sexually abused by her parents. One night, she unknowingly uses telekinetic powers to destroy the house and kill her parents. Her brother suffocates from being held tightly while Neve hides with him in a cabinet. The police find Neve and assume that a gang murdered the family. Already raising their own children Lucy and Ryan, Nat and Lucas agree to be Neve’s foster parents. Tanya Collins counsels Neve as her social worker.

Neve has difficulty adjusting to her new life and is often unresponsive. Nat continues to have ringing in her ears whenever Neve screams. At school, teacher Matthew Collins tries helping Neve fit in.

Neve steals pictures of the Gallins’ deceased daughter Mary from a family photo album and hides them under her bed. The pictures show Mary with bruises on her body along with other images of the Gallins with Neve’s parents. Neve is uncomfortable being touched and repeatedly repels Nat and Lucas’ attempts to get close. The Gallins assume that Neve is responsible when her telekinetic powers inadvertently wreck the kitchen.

Neve wanders the street at night and walks past the home of classmates Peter and Emily. Inside, she sees their mother hitting the two siblings. Neve uses her abilities to kill Peter and Emily’s mother. Afterwards, the children appear to be in a trance and they disappear.

The police interview Nat and Lucas about the similar murder scenes and Neve’s possible involvement. Nat convinces another mother to invite Neve to her daughter’s birthday party. Neve’s odd behavior continues at school, where she has an unusual encounter with Matthew and his pregnant wife Tanya. At home, Nat strikes Neve out of frustration and Lucas is upset to discover the stolen pictures of their daughter Mary.

Nat gives Neve a doll so that she can play with the other girls at the birthday party while Nat speaks privately with the other mother. While the girls undress and strike their dolls, Neve enters a panic that unleashes her powers. A fire erupts in the middle of the girls. Everyone enters a trance and begins pacing towards the flames before the two adult women pull them away.

That night, Neve puts all of the children in town in a trance and brings them to the school. With everyone trapped, Neve leaves with Lucy and Ryan before collapsing the entire building.

Nat and Lucas find the children in Neve’s old home. Neve paralyzes the Gallins. She, Lucy, and Ryan begin speaking as if they are the adults before Neve surrounds their dinner table in flames. With the children willing and the parents unwilling, everyone is engulfed in the fire while Neve cries blood.

---

Review:

All terrifying things are not created equal.  Child abuse is risqué subject matter for a thriller and has its work cut out for it when attempting to entertain as a horror film.  Pure entertainment is not a high priority on the agenda for “Dark Touch,” however.  Yet whatever does occupy that top spot on the movie’s to-do list is replaced by a question mark from the audience’s perspective.  “Dark Touch” wants to be uncomfortable and disturbing with its themes, although the final takeaway and effect that it intends to accomplish are left languishing in ambiguity.

A young Irish lass whose name is spelled as Niamh, but is pronounced phonetically as Neve, escapes in the rain to a nearby house where the neighbors find the bruised and battered girl in hysterics with her tongue having been bitten.  Her parents arrive to claim their daughter and appear as confused as anyone about how Neve came to be injured.  Neve appears to suffer from both physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her mother and father, but she escapes her living hell on a night when telekinetic abilities uncontrollably manifest themselves and turn her family’s home upside down.

The damage is horrific enough for the police to assume that a gang of violent murderers must be responsible for the gruesome deaths of Neve’s family.  Neve moves in with the kindly neighbors from before as they unknowingly adopt a nightmare for themselves.  Neve’s ongoing struggle to adjust to a normal life continues to bring out the worst in her extraordinary powers, creating terror for everyone involved.

Neve is a frustrating character because the audience is not led down a clear path of what to think about her.  Angry parents and unbuckled belts behind closed doors foster initial sympathy for the poor girl’s plight.  Then “Dark Touch” later infers that everything may not be as it seems and alternate interpretations of events and imagery could be warranted.

Anytime a confused and abused girl demonstrates telekinesis in fiction, comparisons to Carrie White are going to be inevitable.  It is a comparison that also makes it easier to see why Neve is less successful as a similar character.

Whereas Carrie earned the audience’s compassion for being met with derision at home and at school, all while doing everything she could to remain resilient and to occupy the life of a regular teenager, Neve never even attempts adapting to normalcy.  She also does not suffer the same level of constant peer insults that Carrie endured daily and her new home environment is a step up from both her previous life and Carrie’s domineering mother.

Neve’s classmates try recruiting her into a doll playing session at a birthday party.  The foster parents do everything they can to welcome the girl into family activities with their other two children.  Neve seems met by affection and acceptance at every turn, yet she commits herself to remaining withdrawn and forlorn.  She rarely responds when she is spoken to.  She walks about with a perpetual expression of parted lips and a line between her eyebrows.  And she misreads everyone’s kind intentions as they fumble to understand what it is they are doing that upsets her so much.

That initial sympathy for the girl’s condition swirls clockwise down a drain as she continually refuses any efforts at aiding her situation.  Her tortured behavior brings the character to a level of annoyance that subverts any design the script may have to win the viewer to her side.  Neve is portrayed as such a singular note empty vessel that continuing to care about her at all is a demand that is never justified.

“Dark Touch” then plunges into an even darker hole for a finale that is heavy on thematic symbolism, yet light on grounded rationalization.  The story takes Neve to places that cast still more shadows of doubt over her motivations while muddling the film’s intentions for exactly what it is that writer/director Marina de Van wishes to convey.  Unless the goal was for the audience to feel the same confused abandonment as a troubled orphan, “Dark Touch” misses as a psychological thriller with its slow to gel purpose and a lead character that is just not compelling.

Review Score:  55

---