Movie Review: Dark Spell (2021)

DarkSpell (2021) had me channelling George W. Bush with a “That’s some weird shit.” I usually take notes when I watch a movie at home (because I’m super fun to be around) and my notes for this movie start with ‘DAFUQ was that intro?!’

Not a great start.

And yet… even though it was strange as fuck, Dark Spell was enjoyable.

For the most part.

(There will be spoilers after this point so go ahead and leave now if you want to avoid them.)

Dark Spell is a Russian-language film about a young mother, Zhenya (Yana Yenzhayeva,) who finds out her piece-of-shit boyfriend and baby daddy, Kir (Konstantin Beloshapka) has been cheating on her. Kir is an artist and only cares about his art – certainly not about his child or any of the women he’s fucking.

You know straight away Zhenya and Kir aren’t meant to be when Kir gets mad at Zhenya for catching him cheating because, “I told you not to come here!” If you think that attitude is shocking, it’s nothing to the way their mothers react. Kir’s mother is pissed off when Zhenya goes looking for Kir after he ghosts her because, “I thought you always knew where he was and who he was with.”

Wow.

You think Zhenya might get a little support from her own mother but, oh no, that’s not how Dark Spell works. Her mother tells her to give Kir space and time because, “He’ll love you even more than before.”

What the actual fuck is wrong with Russian women, y’all?!

What Russia does appear to have going for it at least, is the ability to find a witch in the Yellow Pages. Zhenya just calls up a local witch to get a love spell – which you know is going to go all kinds of wrong because Aza the Gypsy (Sabina Akhmedova) warns her not to expect anything good (her words, not mine) if it’s not real love.

(Take it from a witch, there’s better advice when it comes to love spells: don’t. Just don’t.)

Turns out Aza should have been taking her own advice because she makes some big promises to a demon who gets screwed when Zhenya’s spell goes wrong and they all end up in trouble. Before I get into that, though, I want to talk about some of the things that keep this movie from getting the higher rating it deserves.

Here we go.

One: All the through Dark Spell, starting from the very first scene, you get these flashes of this fucked up black wedding with mannequins as guests and have no idea what it’s about until almost the very end. It’s unnecessary and slows the movie down. I get that you’re trying to do the foreshadowing thing but if you have to try that hard…

Two: The baby is just about pointless. It’s a tool to create suspense – has Kir killed it yet? – but is ignored in almost every other way. Zhenya kills herself to protect this kid but it barely comes up at all in the movie, showing how little she’s thinking about it (because all she can think about is this shitty guy and getting laid) so why is it even there? It might as well have been a dog.

Except, no. Don’t have dogs in movies just to be killed. Stick with killing off the kids.

Three: I’m so over redemption arcs that end in death. It’s lazy writing and it’s unfair both to characters that have been developing over the space of an entire movie and the people who’ve become invested in their development. Stop. Doing. That. Shit. Make people face their consequences and live with it, for fuck’s sake.

Okay, back to naughty, naughty Aza. She hasn’t really been doing love spells so much as telling people how to make promises to a demon that feeds on love. Said demon doesn’t get the love he’s promised (Because obviously that shit's gone wrong. Instead of falling back in love, Kir's become crazy obsessed with Zhenya.) so he starts taking souls instead. Nom nom.

(And that, baby witches, is why we don’t fuck around with what we don’t understand.)

My favourite character in Dark Spell is the witch’s mother (Alla Malkova) who comes in when shit goes bad and tries to fix it, proving that it doesn’t matter if it’s a Russian gypsy or a Jewish mother from the Upper East Side, you better fucking respect old women. They’ve survived decades of the patriarchy and they ain’t got time for your shit.

I really wish Dark Spell hadn’t failed so miserably on the issues I mentioned before because the imagery was absolutely superb, especially when Kir starts making casts of Zhenya’s face and there are masks hanging everywhere. It’s freaking haunting. Then, you have Kir’s death... he resembles a porcelain cast himself that gets smashed, which is very fitting and so, so satisfying.

It’s more than just the art that makes the Dark Spell visually brilliant. You’ve got silhouttes against stained glass windows and shadows flitting across backgrounds. The use of light, shadows, and angle simply can’t be faulted. To look at, Dark Spell is flawless. Unfortunately, because of Zhenya’s so-called redemption, the movie ends on a serious downer and you’re left with a heavy, dreary, hopeless feeling that makes you wish you hadn’t bothered watching it at all.

 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐