THE DARK

Year: 2005
USA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
UK: Momentum Pictures
Cast: Maria Bello, Sean Bean, Maurice Roeves, Sophie Stuckey, Abigail Stone, Richard Elfyn,
Director: John Fawcett
Countries: Germany / UK
USA & UK: 93 mins
USA Rated: R for some violent/disturbing images and language
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong horror
USA DVD Release: 11 April 2006
UK Release Date: 7 April 2006

Synopsis

How far would you go to save the life of a loved one?

Would you go into the very jaws of death itself?

In a last ditch attempt to pull her family back together, New Yorker Adelle (Maria Bello) travels with her young daughter Sarah (Sophie Stuckey) to Wales - to see her estranged husband James (Sean Bean) and try to patch their lives back together in the surroundings of an old cliff-top farmhouse.

But Adelle's worst nightmares are realised when, days into the trip, Sarah is tragically swept out to sea, pulled into the dark depths despite her mother's desperate attempts to save her.

While James leads the search for Sarah's body, a guilt-ridden Adelle is haunted by visions and traces of her daughter - it's almost as if Sarah is trapped somewhere in the house itself.

Learning of an ancient local legend of a place called The Dark - an ethereal land of the dead that is a distorted mirror image of the real world - Adelle becomes convinced Sarah is trying to communicate to her from this sinister parallel universe.

When she finds a strange, scarred little girl named Ebrill (Abigail Stone) in Sarah's bed, Adelle is sure she's the key to getting her daughter back.

For the legend dictates that the departed can be returned from The Dark if a sacrifice is made - one of the living for one of the dead. And if Ebrill is who she says she is, she died over fifty years before.

But all James can see in his wife is a woman in the depths of despair and on the very edge of sanity. To him, Ebrill is a runaway, nothing more.

However, when local farmer and handyman Daffyd (Maurice Roeves) recognises Ebrill from his own shadowy childhood, one filled with stark memories of a rural pagan cult, Adelle knows her suspicions are true.

And she takes the ultimate leap of faith - throwing herself into the ocean, and into The Dark itself, in her frantic attempt to reclaim her daughter's life.

Based on Simon Maginn's 1994 novel 'Sheep', THE DARK is produced by Jeremy Bolt who with ALIEN VS PREDATOR director W S Anderson heads Impact Pictures.