Philip Ridley’s momentarily vampiric The Reflecting Skin was a monumentally eerie film, deftly mixing homespun Americana ideals with surreal horror tropes, to beautifully cultish effect. Not nearly as known — and that’s really saying something — is the follow-up, The Passion of Darkly Noon, an even stranger film that, it seems, is still delightfully enigmatic some 25 years later.
A daring Brendan Fraser is the devoutly doctrinal Darkly Noon, the remaining survivor of a religious cult that apparently (off-screen) has just been shot all to hell by the FBI. Running through the woods and knockin’ on heaven’s door himself, Darkly is found and taken to the house of excitable sexpot Callie (Ashley Judd).
Married to a volatile mute (Viggo Mortensen), Callie’s provocative demeanor (but unwavering loyalty) is a bit too much sin and skin for Darkly, who, by the way, is as incel as they come; after numerous sessions of masturbation and flagellation, when he reckons there is no love in the world for him, he paints his body red and exacts unearned revenge.
Full of faux-poetic symbolism and heavy-handed allegories, Darkly Noon doesn’t really deliver on the promise of Skin, but with standout performances from the usually lunkheaded Fraser and dreamlike Judd, combined with the David Lynch-lite flourishes, Ridley does craft a watchable movie that is … well, still delightfully enigmatic. —Louis Fowler
On Amazon Prime this month
Good to know! Thanks, Doug!