An interesting blend of the haunted house and psychopathic stalker subgenres, They Wait in the Dark offers an interesting, if not always fully realized, tale of siege and vengeance.

Amy (Sarah McGuire) and her adopted son Adrian (Patrick McGee) are on the run from her ex-girlfriend, Judith (Laurie Catherine Winkel), leaving the two of them homeless for all practical purposes. They travel to Amy’s family’s farmhouse outside her Kansas hometown.  Amy’s father, who had been in prison for killing her mother, passed recently and the house sits empty and thus seems the perfect place to hole up and take refuge while planning what to do next.  Turns out local kids are now using it as a party house and the inside is trashed.  Jenny (Paige Maria), Amy’s childhood best friend, helps them get settled and serves as the person to whom Amy delivers exposition.  As Judith closes in on them, they discover the farmhouse is not a sanctuary and all is not what it seems.  Judith is not the only monster, Amy not the only victim.

The visual elements of They Wait in the Dark are solid.  The farmhouse is dark and oppressive. Director Rea’s camera captures the characters, but also the shadows lurking behind and around them. The restoration of electricity does nothing to make the home seem more lit.  Kudos to the set dressers, working on a limited budget, to effectively convey both abandoned farmhouse, party house, and former family home. It suffers from occasionally clumsy writing and slow moments, though. Amy and Adrian travel ridiculously light, which makes sense if they are fleeing domestic abuse, but not to grab any changes of clothes or personal items?  Amy’s father was imprisoned over a decade ago, the house abandoned, but his Direct TV dish still sits proudly on the roof. The diner where Jenny works inexplicably has a photo of Jenny and Amy as children taped up near the register, just at Judith’s eyeline, which feels a bit too contrived.

Otherwise, They Wait in the Dark is buoyed by performances by McGuire, McGee and Maria. The use of low budget effects is successful in creating dread in the oppressive atmosphere of the farmhouse.  The mother and son live under a constant threat of violence from other women: Judith and the ghost that haunts them. For one half of the villains, Winkel is sadly not given much to do for the first two-thirds of the film other than stab a man for catcalling her.  Frankly, while seemingly supposed to paint her as a violent sociopath, I suspect many people watching would not have an issue with her behavior in the scene.  The reveal shows her character is more complex, but being given no real backstory until then, the character comes across as flat rather than round, through no fault of Winkel’s.

They Wait in the Dark is a low-budget, slow burn horror that tells a different story than usual and while it does not always reach the heights it aims for, it still delivers an interesting film.

7 out of 10