When Darkness Falls is a stalk-and-kill tourist horror set in the remote highlands of Scotland, capturing the beauty of the countryside as well as the horrors that can be stumbled upon therein. Directed and co-written by Nathan Shepka, When Darkness Falls seems novice at first, with a shot-on-video look and shaky cold opening, but the movie finds its footing and gains traction with interesting characters, well-placed foreshadowing, an agreeable pace, and sometimes unexpected plot choices.

Two American girlfriends — Andrea (Emma O’Hara) and Jess (Michaela Longden) — reconnect after college and go on a hiking expedition together across the Scottish highlands. After taking a break in a lonely pub, Andrea and Jess are joined by two men — Nate (Nathan Shepka) and Tommy (Craig McEwan) — who Andrea is immediately wary of while Jess wants to use them for some fun. Deciding to split up, Jess stays at the pub with her new friends while Andrea sojourns on alone, only for them to end up desperately trying to find one another after they realize they may be the next victims after a recent local disappearance.

The majority of the film takes place over the course of a couple of days but a lot of narrative is packed within that timeframe. The film has a straightforward story of killers wrangling and strangling their prey, but like the long journey given to the heroines of this story, the film took quite a long journey to reach its destination. When Darkness Falls had quite a handful of characters despite the story calling for the characters to be in a noted sparsely populated area. The hearty cast was welcome, however, as I felt each member did an excellent job at expressing emotions; their performances helped raise the production quality of the film, which seemed rather low-budget.

When Darkness Falls begins with a cold opening that I thought did a good job at setting up the premise of the story as well as the direction style and production quality; the movie could have done without this cold opening in all honesty, as the exposition given in this scene could have been surmised from the rest of the film, and it would have helped to cut down on the long runtime. This cold opening also gave the impression of an amateur film that was not going to be good, however getting further into the story, the film does get more and more magnetic and the scenes more intense. Particularly with the film’s harrowing ending, which was almost brave had it stuck to the ending it originally presented before the after-credits scene — its dual ending possibly being inspired by another UK film, the horror classic The Descent.

When Darkness Falls got off to a questionable start for me, looking and sounding like an exploitation film, however, the ending turned out to be quite a rollercoaster of revelations. Unlike other low-budget films, When Darkness Falls did not fill the film with unnecessary sensational matter like nudity and wanton goriness — however quite a lot of blood is shed in the end. When Darkness Falls had all the makings of an exploitation film that was going to unleash an onslaught of violence upon American tourists as punishment for their naivety, but this film was rather tame violence wise, however, writer, director, and star villain, Nathan Shepka, certainly does hit the mark as far as character development and using foreshadowing to build a foreboding atmosphere.

6.5 out of 10