Never After Dark

by Hope Madden

Who doesn’t like a good ghost story? And a Japanese ghost story at that!

Writer/director Dave Boyle (Man from Reno) generates spooky tension with Never After Dark, his tale of a traveling psychic hired to help the dead leave this plane. Airi (Moeka Hoshi, TV’s Shōgun), the quietly no-nonsense medium, arrives at an isolated little inn recently purchased on auction by a widow (Tae Kimura) and her son (Kento Kaku). Odd things are happening at the property.

It’s hard to place the period for the film. Landlines, sweater vests and shoulder pads suggest early 90s (a sweet spot for J-horror). The analog vibe suits the film’s dreamy pace. This is a slow burn, sometimes perhaps slower than necessary, but it’s still effective.

Boyle immediately introduces a worn-out genre trope only to expose it, using the gimmick as a tool for the narrative at hand. It works surprisingly well. Images throughout the film feel familiar more than borrowed, and Boyle’s framing and use of light give scenes a lovely but spooky quality.

Hoshi delivers a fascinating central performance: a loner who’s not alone, a polite misanthrope more comfortable with the dead than the living. The balance of the small cast impresses with memorable characters, but the tension grows because of Hoshi. Airi’s petulant defiance of sound advice, her occasionally reckless behavior, and her utter isolation coalesce as the entity in the inn is more fully revealed.

When the violence does come, it’s unsettling. But Boyle has spent more than an hour slowly drawing your interest and almost reluctant affection for these characters, and that’s where the tension really comes from.

Never After Dark delivers on its earliest promise of a stylish supernatural thriller, but Boyle isn’t afraid to get nasty here and there. The combination gives the horror a little substance and the style a nice punch.