Dark Mountain



The most famous story surrounding Superstition Mountain is that of the Lost Dutchman’s Gold mine, which involves a German immigrant (now ironic) named Jacob Waltz, who, according to legend, supposedly found a lucrative gold mine out in the Arizona wilderness. But the mine was located in Apache territory, things happened,  something something something (some of the details here vary), and Waltz ended up on his death bed, surviving just long enough to tell people about the mine and give enough information for a crude map.

For over a hundred years, people have searched for the mine with no success, and strange stories about bizarre happenings have plagued the area for years. Several people have died. One person killed themselves. It’s just a bummer of a mountain. But three young filmmakers are convinced that surely THEY can find the mine, so they head out into the desert, ill prepared for what they are about to find.



Ugh…. Okay, here goes…. Dark Mountain is an American found footage sci-fi/horror film from 2013. The easiest (and shortest) way to explain it, is that it’s pretty much a poor man’s Blair Witch Project. You’ve got three people heading out into the wilderness to an area plagued by “strange stories”, they mess with things they shouldn’t, they get lost, bad things happen, and a shaky camera is involved (actually, in this case there’s two cameras…). The only real difference is, instead of getting lost in the woods of the northeast, they get lost in the Arizona desert. *shrugs* Oh, and it’s also not nearly as thought out as its progenitor, so it ends up making precious little sense by the end. Oh goodie.



Truth be told, I started out actually liking this movie. Not at first, mind you. The opening credit sequence was WAY too long and was essentially just shots of their road trip through the window of the car, and it literally took 5 minutes to get to the title card. But after that it grew on me as things were starting to look up. Like most of these types of films, they established what place they were going to, discussed its history and why it’s considered so “mysterious”, what they were going to do and what their ultimate goals were, etc, etc… You know, the standard opener for these “docu-horror” outings. Then they get to the parking lot for Lost Dutchman State Park (which is an actual place, by the way) and start their journey, and weird things slowly start happening and clues are getting dropped and the tension is building up, and things are looking good.



But then about halfway through you realize that they’re still dropping hints and none of them seem interconnected in any way, and it slowly starts to dawn on you that these guys couldn’t actually nail down a solid plot-line. First it’s heavily implied that they’re dealing with aliens, then they make the implication that it’s ghosts, and then even later they bring up the possibility of some sort of time vortex. And by that point you’re just sitting there thinking, “please god, just pick one and be done with it.” But unfortunately, and this is a spoiler, I’m here to tell you, they don’t. In fact, they don’t pick anything. They end the movie without telling you what was going on or even trying to explain how all these wild, unrelated happenings, that they clearly established and everyone saw, were ever connected. And I almost want to blame it on Devil’s Pass, which I watched a couple years ago, because they did something very similar. But (1) that movie came out the same year as this one, and (2) that movie actually had an ending. Granted, it was a crazy ending, but it did attempt to tie a bunch of the pre-established theories together, so at least they tried. THIS movie though, didn’t. So it just obnoxiously ends with a bunch of “AH!” screaming in the dark before the credit’s start to roll. I mean, Blair Witch (which this movie mentions!), essentially did the same thing. But at least their implications of what was going on in their movie were clear. Here?… I have no idea what to think. Was that one guy possessed? Um, I think so? Or was he being manipulated by those weird lights in the sky? Possibly? And even if he was, what the hell does time travel have to do with any of that? And who was that guy the camerawoman kept seeing out in the distance? Did he somehow tie into the time travel nonsense, or was he just some random hiker out on the trails? I don’t know, I don’t know, I JUST DON’T KNOW!


WHO! WERE! YOU!

So other than that utter nonsense with the plot, the movie is pretty much your standard “shaky-cam” horror film. The acting was serviceable, but not great. The characters were predictably dumb. The camera work is typical of the style: jittery, but with the occasional nice scenic shot or small scene involving wildlife. Though this time one of them is also using their camera phone with an obvious “old-time-y” filter that I wasn’t all that fond of. But other than that, this is all pretty standard stuff. I think my only complaint here is that it was occasionally hard to hear what people were saying. But that’s also pretty par for the course with these types of films, so I’m not too surprised about that.



So, really disappointed with this Dark Mountain, I was. It started off pretty well and was establishing some pretty solid atmosphere. But I’m afraid their lack of decisiveness, or their desire not to try to explain the “mystery”, really bungles it at the end. So it’s a big, unsatisfying womp womp in that regard. Which is a shame. But it’s still better than some of the other “shaky-cam” films I’ve seen, meaning it’s still not the bottom of the barrel. Just highly unsatisfactory.

Dark Mountain is available on a variety of streaming services.

Dark Mountain is also available on DVD.

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