We Summon The Darkness (2020)

Be careful what you pray for.

We Summon The Darkness is proof that Alexandra Daddario will star in any film that’s willing to pay her. It premiered in February of 2019 at the Mammoth Mountain Film Festival but didn’t streaming services until April of 2020. It turns the whole Satanic Panic event of the 1980’s on its head, a decent idea for a film, but totally drops the ball.

JUST FYI…..SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

The film opens with with three young ladies, Alexis, Bev, and Val, heading to a huge metal concert somewhere in Indiana. They stop at a convenience store where we are introduced to Reverend John Henry Butler, a leading opponent of heavy metal and the supposed leader in the battle against a string of Satanic cult ritual murders happening across the United States, on television. Then the girls hit the road once again. A van passes them and throws a milkshake at their window. When the girls arrive at the concert venue, they discover the van and play a trick on its occupants, a trio of metal heads named Mark, Ivan, and Kovacs. Ultimately the two trios bond and the girls take the boys back to Alexis’ house.

Once they arrive at the house, the girls drug the boys, strip them down to their underwear, and set up a staged Satanic ritual to kill them. Why? Because the girls are actually part of Reverend Butler’s church and they are using the murders to bring more people to Christ in a very twisted way. The only thing wrong with this, besides the murder part, is that Butler is actually utilizing the murders to increase his church’s membership AND bring in the big bucks. When Bev uncovers the truth, she has second thoughts about murdering the boys and tries to help the survivors escape. Alexis, still believing that she’s doing the Lord’s work, then turns on Bev, her stepmother, the cops, and anybody else that gets in her way. Val sides with Alexis and tries to take out Bev and the survivors as well. Then the reverend shows up and all hell breaks loose.

On paper this sounds like a pretty good horror film. In actuality it’s a dull, plodding flick with a weak plot, bad acting, and not one decent character. I couldn’t care less if any of the characters died. The kills were uninspired and despite all of her attempts to completely “crazy” it up, Alexandra Daddario just fell flat.

I figured out the plot in the first few minutes of the film, so the “twist” didn’t come as a surprise. This film was a huge disappointment. Heck, I preferred Daddario’s performances in a couple of her other horror films, Texas Chainsaw and Bereavement, and I didn’t really care for either of those films. The only actors that did decent jobs were Amy Forsyth as Bev and Allison McAtee as Susan, Alexis’ stepmother. Sadly she wasn’t in the film long enough to help it out enough.

Don’t waste your time on this one. A much better heavy metal inspired horror film is Deathgasm (2015), a horror comedy that knows exactly what it is and delivers the goods. That being said, We Summon The Darkness is available on Netflix.

Thanks for checking out my review. I wish that I had better things to say about We Summon The Darkness but I can’t honestly recommend it. I might just have to review Deathgasm in the near future. See you again soon!