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During the COVID lockdowns of 2020, scientists worked tirelessly to find ways to battle the virus. But their experience probably wasn’t as harrowing—or as perilous—as that of the scientist searching for a cure while struggling to survive in Dark Night of the Soul.
Dark Night of the Soul stars Kristanna Loken as Dr. Alex Walden, the scientist at the head of the CDC’s fight to find a cure for the deadly virus that’s killed much of the world’s population over the past two years. When Alex crashes her car in a remote field and ends up wounded and trapped, it seems as though she’s failed in her mission. But as she fights to survive, imagined conversations with her late father, her sister, and her late daughter help her look at things from a different perspective.
Alone with her thoughts, her memories, and her regrets, Alex uses the survival techniques that she learned from her demanding father (Martin Kove) to collect the things she needs to tend to her wounds and attempt to get help. As time passes, though, she begins to lose hope. And as she slips in and out of consciousness, she considers the choices she’s made and the work she’s done. We learn more about the character here as she imagines heated discussions with her sister and her father—as she mourns her husband and daughter and regrets staying behind to work while they traveled to Africa with the Peace Corps.
Really, it’s a good thing that the character drifts off into hallucinations of these conversations with the people she loves—because the rest of the film is just a whole lot of grunting, panting, and screaming as she tries her best to endure the pain of her injuries. Admittedly, her hallucinations aren’t always interesting—but outside these conversations, not much happens.
Eventually, Alex’s hallucinations help her work through some of the pain of her past—and some of the things that she’s been missing in her search for the cure. But it all feels about as hazy as the imagined conversations that she has throughout her fight for survival.
The idea of a scientist fighting to find a cure for a deadly virus is definitely one that we’ll all understand. But there isn’t a whole lot going on in this story—and somewhere between the character’s rambling hallucinations and the long scenes of grunting and panting, viewers may just give up their fight to pay attention.
You can join Alex on her quest when Dark Night of the Soul arrives on Prime Video on November 12, 2024.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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