He took Greek in high school, Ben says.
Does he mean ghosts? Megan says.
Sounds more like devils, George says.
No, Isabelle says. These are beings of the primordial dark, beyond the Church’s sway. They depend on blood to maintain their presence in this world. They can’t be cast out, or destroyed, only contained.
Which is what happened here, George says. Agatha Merryweather was brought to this place to imprison her.
That’s the theory, Isabelle says. At first, she read this entire story as a case of a mentally ill girl subjected to a prolonged victimization by religious maniacs. The mine, she assumed, was intended as a jail, primitive but low profile. Most likely, the men who transported her to upstate New York planned for her to die in these tunnels, of malnutrition or disease.
Why would they have thought this? Kristi says. Didn’t Isabelle just say the death-spirits couldn’t be killed?
It’s complicated, Isabelle says. The Keres are fundamentally violent; they can’t be killed by violent means. However, if their host dies of natural causes, they lose their hold on it.
This makes no sense, Kristi says. How does any of this make sense?
The point is, Carmen says, Isabelle thought they were dealing with a crazy person.
Honestly, Isabelle says, she was sure Agatha had been dead for years. The most she expected was to find her remains.
Instead, Kristi says, they have… this. What they have.
“Us,” George says, “lost. In the Dark. With a monster.”
Their wandering has brought the crew to another unfamiliar location, a small chamber whose rough walls recede at regular intervals to what appear to be doorways. This is the IMDB summary of what ensues:
Ben shines his flashlight on the recess furthest to the right. It shows solid rock. He swings the light to the left. The next recess opens on a passageway. He swings the light to the left, to the recess directly across from him. It is solid, too, but there is something on the rock at approximately head level. It is the same portrait the film crew saw at the beginning of the expedition, a woman’s face, the left half a skull. Megan shrieks. Kristi says, What the fuck? Ben says, It’s only another drawing, and crosses to it. He reaches out his free hand to touch it. He says, See?
His flashlight goes out. Megan shrieks again. Carmen says, Ben? George says, Now is not the time for screwing around, kid. He aims his flashlight at the recess.
There is a flurry of motion. Ben screams. George’s flashlight beam swings from side to side, trying to keep up with the action. Kristi shouts. Carmen points her flashlight in Ben’s direction. She says, There! There! Ben continues screaming. There is someone grabbing him from behind. White arms wrap around his neck and chest. White legs encircle his waist. A head with long black hair presses against his neck. Ben grabs at the arms. He slaps at the head. He stumbles back into the wall. Megan screams, Someone do something! Professor Price shouts, Agatha! Agatha, stop!
Agatha growls and tugs her head back. There is the sound of flesh tearing, followed by a hiss as blood sprays from Ben’s open throat. He drops to his knees, slaps at Agatha’s hands, and falls forward, Agatha still clinging to him. She drops her head to his neck. There is the sound of her slurping his blood. Kristi says, Holy shit. Megan screams, You fucking bitch! and runs at Agatha, raising her flashlight as a club. Agatha ducks her swing and leaps onto her. She knocks Megan onto her back, and rips her throat out. Kristi says, Jesus Christ.
George says, We have to get out of here. He runs from the chamber. Agatha jumps off Megan onto the wall. She hangs on it like a spider. Professor Price shouts, Agatha! Please! Agatha! Agatha scrambles up the wall and out of the light. Carmen sweeps her flashlight around the ceiling. Kristi shouts, Where did she go? Where is she? The professor shouts, Agatha! Please!
Agatha drops onto Carmen. Her flashlight spins away. She screams. Agatha growls. Kristi and Professor Price scramble out of the way. There is the sound of Carmen struggling. Kristi shouts, Come on! Let’s go! Now! Carmen shouts, wait! Help me! Kristi says, I’m sorry, and runs through the passageway Ben discovered. Carmen shouts, Kristi! Agatha snarls. The professor says, Agatha, please, then follows Kristi. Carmen screams.
The screen goes black.
After five seconds, there is a clatter and the screen fills with Kristi’s face, illuminated by the camera light. She says, I don’t know why I’m doing this. There’s no way either of us is getting out of here. I can hear her—Agatha. She’s coming closer. Kristi begins to cry. She says, I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about Carmen. I couldn’t do anything about Ben and Megan. Maybe I couldn’t have helped Carmen, either, but I’m sorry. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She says, And George, if you make it out of this place, and somehow see this, fuck you, you chickenshit piece of shit.
The camera turns to show Isabelle Price’s face. Kristi says, You never told us everything, did you? Professor Price shakes her head. Kristi asks, Anything you want to say now? Isabelle shakes her head. Kristi says, You know this is all your fault. The professor nods. Kristi says, We’re going to leave this camera here, in hopes that someone will find it. Which is about as stupid as all the rest of this, but hey, why stop now? She sets the camera down, turned to light the tunnel she and Professor Price are headed down. She says, We still have a flashlight. We’ll hold off using it as long as we can, to save the batteries. Professor Price starts along the tunnel. Kristi follows. When she is almost out of view Kristi stops and turns. She says, I can hear her. Hurry.
The women disappear into the darkness. For the next three minutes, the credits roll over the scene. Once the credits are finished, the camera light dims. There is the sound of bare feet slapping stone. Agatha’s face fills the screen. Her features are those of a young woman, covered in blood. Her eyes are wide. Blood plasters her hair to her forehead and cheeks. The screen flickers. Agatha’s left eye is an empty socket, her left cheek sunken, her lips on this side drawn back from jagged teeth. The screen flickers again, goes to static, then goes dark.
It’s the teacher in me: I can’t help wanting to discuss all the things Lost in the Dark does right. The opening, for example, which imparts a substantial amount of background information to the viewer without sacrificing interest, as well as the Agatha Merryweather narrative, itself, which taps into the enduring fascination with the Catholic Church and its secrets (which, if I felt like being truly pedantic, I would point out is one of the ribs of the larger umbrella of the Gothic under which the movie shelters). Or the way the film suggests there’s even more to the Agatha narrative than we’ve been told, than anyone’s been told. Only Isabelle Price knows the full story, and to the end, she keeps back some portion of it. By making her the model for the portraits of Agatha the crew encounter, a similarity no one mentions, the movie visually suggests a connection between the women, which contributes to the audience’s growing sense that the characters are in a situation that’s much worse than they understand. (It’s one of the enduring conceits of the film that the identity of the actress who portrays Bad Agatha has never been revealed. The credits assign the part to Agatha Merryweather. I’m of the camp that would wager money Isabelle Router played the monster; it fits too well with the portrait ploy not to be the case.)
Were it not for Sarah Fiore’s interview in the Blu-ray extras, this article might address itself to exactly such a critical analysis. That interview, though, changed everything. According to Sarah, the trip into the mine to shoot footage for Isabelle Router’s documentary lasted much longer than they had planned, almost twenty hours. During that time, the crew became lost, wandering out of the mine into a series of natural tunnels and caves. While underground, they had a number of strange experiences, about half of which at least one member of the crew caught on film. They returned to the surface with a couple of hours of decent footage that was not what they had been planning on. After a rough edit, Sarah sat down with Larry Fessenden to watch the film. He loved it. He also thought she had abandoned her plan for a documentary in favor of an outright horror movie. Thinking quickly, Sarah responded to his enthusiasm by saying that yes, she had decided to go a different route. Fessenden offered to produce a feature-length version of what he’d seen, on the condition that Sarah revise the script to give it a more substantial narrative. Since there was no actual script at that moment, his request was both easier and harder to fulfill; nonetheless, she agreed to it. She also agreed that she should keep as much of what she’d shown him as they could in the longer film. This turned out to be about forty minutes of an hour and forty minute movie. Isabelle Router was willing essentially to play herself, as were Kristi Nightingale and George Maltmore. The interns, Priya and Chad, had no interest in taking part in another expedition to the mine, so they were replaced by a pair of actors, Ben Formosa and Megan Park. Rather than juggle the roles of director, scriptwriter, and actor, Sarah hired Carmen Fuentes to play her. The rest is cinema history.