The Dark and the Wicked

Post-screening reception will include small bites, wine, beer, and cocktails generously provided by Superbird Tequila.

When they’re informed of the family patriarch’s imminent demise, grown siblings Louise (Marin Ireland) and Michael (Michael Abbott Jr.) warily venture back to the childhood home from which they both fled years before, rallying to support their grieving mother and help care for their father in his final days. Upon their arrival at the fading farmstead nestled deep in the Texas hills, the pair are confronted with an altogether more chilling reality: their mother seems to be under the influence of some sort of evil supernatural presence—a shape-shifting, mind-warping entity that wants Louise and Michael gone. Writer-director Bryan Bertino wields an impressively precise command of mood and atmosphere, time and place, mapping out the dim interiors of the family farmstead in compositions of dense, painterly chiaroscuro, and alternating these shots with ominous, shiver-inducing tableaux of forlorn figures framed in stark silhouette against the sun-blanched farmland.

Since it arrived on the scene in 2015, Shudder has established itself as the premier streaming destination for avid devotees of the horror genre. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the company’s founding, Scary Movies is pleased to present this special theatrical presentation of Bertino’s indelible fourth feature, which returns to the big screen five years after a largely virtual festival run in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Featuring an introduction by Sam Zimmerman, Shudder’s Senior Vice President of Programming and Acquisitions. A Shudder release.