Director – Thomas Marchese, Screenplay – Jessub Flower & Thomas Marchese, Producers – Vincent Cardinale & Kelly Frazier, Photography – Duncan Cole, Music – Luigi Janssen, Visual Effects – Bossk VFX (Supervisor – Jason R. Miller), Special Effects Supervisor – Greg McDougal, Production Design – Julie Toche. Production Company – Darkroom Films/K7 Storytellers/AMP International/EyeVox Entertainment.
Cast
Anna Camp (Cora Loewen), John Ales (Able Grossman), Jennifer LaFleur (Alison Bray), Travis Hammer (Wyatt), Eduardo Campirano III (Noah Loewen)
Plot
Cora Loewen is a recovering addict attending a support group, still feeling grief for her son Noah who was abducted and killed while she was high. She is approached by the group’s leader Able who says he has a way of bringing Noah back. Despite her initial scepticism, Cora allows Able to introduce her to an occult ritual that he insists will bring Noah back. The struggle to perfect the ritual takes Cora into dark places.
From Black was the first fictional film debut for director Thomas Marchese, who had previously made the full-length documentary Fallen (2017) about police deaths in the line of duty.
Thomas Marchese’s background in documentary seems clearly evident when it comes to From Black. He directs in a sober, realistic manner – the film is set in rural Mississippi and the countryside looks dull and lifeless, which seems befitting the characters’ lives. The use of rural environment and flat naturalistic photography evokes something of the rural occult of films like The Witch: A New-England Folktale (2015), Pyewacket (2017) and Helllbender (2021).
Thomas Marchese does a fine job in drawing the film down into dark and disturbing places. There are a range of creepy sinister figures lurking in the dark and behind Anna Camp. The film gets a particular jolt as we follow the efforts to get the detail of the ritual right and Anna Camp’s frustrations as nothing happening, before we hear the rattling of chains come from off-screen and then the jolt where we see turn back to see Anna Camp levitated in mid-air. Particularly unnerving is the scene where we see John Ales start coughing up bones and sinew and then in the background what looks like a hand forcing its way out of his mouth.
Occult conjurations
From Black is also produced by its lead actors Anna Camp and John Ales. Neither are faces that I have noticed before this but both give fine performances that leave me making a mental note to keep an eye on what they appear in in future. In particular, Anna Camp has a solid-headedness where you can easily follow her on her descent into some dark spaces, while John Ales makes wild-eyed and crazy seem believable. Also well worthwhile is Jennifer LaFleur who gives a strong, sober performance as Anna Camp’s sister.
You can’t really hate any film that has characters conducting a fan theory discussion on Finding Nemo (2003) as to whether Nemo was all in his father Marlin’s head. The only quibble about the film is not so much the writing but that some of the dialogue ends up being delivered at a conversational level and is very quiet on the soundtrack such that I was straining to hear what was being said.
