Is The Dark and the Wicked Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Yes, 7 out of 10. It is bleak, slow dread on a Texas farm, with plenty of jump scares.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
7 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
High
Expect the bleakness to follow you around for a few days.
DOG
Dog: fine
fine, no dog dies.
Ruling: Skip it if you are grieving someone, and otherwise watch it early in the day.
The Dark and the Wicked runs 95 minutes on a Texas farm where a man is dying and his wife would like their grown children to leave. The children stay anyway, which is the first of several decisions the movie does not reward.
The premise, briefly
Two grown siblings go home to a Texas farm as their father nears the end, and their mother tells them to leave.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
Michael cuts his own throat after seeing an illusion of his murdered family, and the demon claims Louise moments after their father dies. Nobody who came home to the farm gets away.
The scene you're dreading
In the middle of the movie, Louise and Michael find their whole herd of goats dead and burn the carcasses in a bonfire. That night the entity appears to Michael in the barn.
The dog
No dog dies in The Dark and the Wicked. The farm's goats are the animals that die.
It is a relentlessly bleak haunting built from jump scares and slow dread, and knowing the plot gives you the order of the deaths but cannot soften them.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
A mother who would like her children to leave
Louise and Michael come back to their family farm in Texas because their father's long illness seems close to the end. Their mother is disturbed to see them and says she wants them gone. That night she cuts off her own fingers in the kitchen, apparently without meaning to, and then hangs herself in the barn. As the days go on, the siblings try to work out what happened. Their father's nurse tells them she overheard their mother whispering to him in a way that sounded like she was talking to something else in the room. Michael finds a diary their mother kept, full of her fear of some unnamed presence, possibly demonic, that had its eye on her husband.
The burial brings Louise and Michael face to face with Father Thorne, a priest who says he knew their mother. Later that night he turns up at the farm, calls to them from outside, asks if they want some rope, and vanishes in front of them. Charlie, a ranch hand who lives in an RV on a nearby plot, tries to phone Michael and then sees a vision of Louise cutting herself over and over with a kitchen knife. The entity pushes him to shoot himself with his shotgun. Louise can't reach Charlie and doesn't know he is dead. She calls the number the priest left, and a man in Chicago says he has never met her or been to Texas. The siblings worry about their father and call a doctor, who says he is on his deathbed and can't be moved to a hospital without risking his life on the way.
A herd of goats with nobody left to feed them
This is the scene to brace for, and it comes in the middle of the movie. Louise and Michael walk out and find their entire herd of goats dead. The siblings burn the carcasses in a bonfire. That night an apparition of Michael's naked mother approaches him in the barn and vanishes, then reappears behind him and tries to possess him and make him cut his own throat. He narrowly resists. Louise lies down next to her father and dreams that the entity is trying to possess him. She manages to block it out, and then she sees her father floating against the ceiling and telling her to run.
A farm that lets nobody leave
The next morning Charlie's granddaughter arrives and tells Louise that Charlie killed himself two days ago. The girl's sad manner turns hostile, and Louise realizes the entity is wearing the girl's form before she disappears. The nurse shows up to look after the father. Michael has left the farm to go home to his wife and daughters, and he phones Louise to say she should leave too. Then the nurse, possessed, stabs herself with knitting needles while attacking Louise and dies after stabbing herself in the eyes. At home, Michael finds his wife and daughters dead in the kitchen and cuts his own throat. Their bodies vanish, and his family walks in alive a moment later to find him bleeding out. The entity had fooled him.
The ending, explained
Louise wakes up at nightfall and finds her father dying. He dies, and the demon attacks her and claims her right after. Everything else is settled by then: their mother, Charlie and the nurse are dead, the goats are dead, and Michael bleeds to death in front of his wife and daughters, who are alive. Nobody who came home to the farm gets away.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is The Dark and the Wicked scary?
Yes, The Dark and the Wicked is a 7 out of 10. It has jump scares, graphic self-harm and a bleak mood that stays with you for a few days.
How does The Dark and the Wicked end?
Michael's wife and daughters are alive and the sight of them dead was an illusion, but he has already cut his own throat. Louise's father dies and the demon claims her.
Does the dog die in The Dark and the Wicked?
No, no dog dies in The Dark and the Wicked. The farm's goats are found dead in the middle of the movie, and that scene is the one animal moment to be warned about.
Is there a post-credits scene in The Dark and the Wicked?
No. The Dark and the Wicked has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
Who is Father Thorne in The Dark and the Wicked?
Father Thorne claims to have known Louise and Michael's mother. The man at the phone number he gives Louise says he lives in Chicago and has never met her.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of The Dark and the Wicked is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
You don't have to spend 95 minutes on the farm in The Dark and the Wicked to learn how it goes. Install Scaredy Cat and it will blur horror before you see it.
