I Will Follow You Into the Dark

Smart and scary horror films about faith, and loneliness are rare, and for the most part, "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is pretty exciting.

What is perhaps most surprising is that the film’s first hour, the non-horror section, is far more compelling than the second, an extended, nonsensical haunted hotel sequence that never scares, intrigues, or surprises.

Muddled by a setup with a religious bent that's never fully explored and an instance of euthanasia that's only tenuously related to the central plot.

It ultimately devolves into yet another rote horror film that in this case lives up to its name by also being seriously underlit.

For a supernatural thriller that spends so much time on material that is neither supernatural nor thrilling, there’s not nearly enough effort put into credible, complex character writing, leaving the cast only so much ability to fill in the gaps.

This fiasco from the writer and director Mark Edwin Robinson will persuade you that the title refers not to a place without light (though there’s precious little) but to a story without reason.

Rare is the film so ineptly made that it barely deserves the dignity of a review. Which, on the one hand, makes this slapdash horror romance somewhat unusual. On the other, however, you’re wasting valuable time just reading about it.