A Dark Foe is a 2019 crime drama about a guilt-ridden FBI agent with an irrational fear and living with a painful memory.
FBI agent Tony Cruz (Oscar Cardenas) has reason to fear the dark, his childhood one ruined by a deeply traumatic event that has left him inconsolably racked with guilt. As an adult, he is diagnosed with nyctophobia, a psychological neurosis that sees him paralyzed when the lights go out. The guy literally curls up in a corner. Meanwhile, he is on the hunt for a maniac labeled ‘The Cradle,’ a monster he knows all too well, now one step closer to catching, going undercover as a bodyguard for a former prostitute turned wealthy socialite, Rebecca Crawford (Kenzie Dalton), a beautiful woman with whom he quickly falls. Soon enough, he finds himself wallowing in a harrowing underworld of sex and death where a demon from his past awaits.
From young Venezuelan director Maria Gabriela Cardenas, in her feature length debut, A Dark Foe comes packed with plenty of familiar landmarks the genre is best known for, most, like this one, drawing from Jonathan Demme‘s The Silence of the Lambs with a tortured FBI agent fighting old haunts while tracking down a cryptic killer fascinated by skin. Be that as it may, copycats run amok all over the movies and so, even as Maria Gabriela Cardenas – who is credited as co-writer with Oscar, her father – runs parallel with much we’ve seen before, there’s still enough filling up the in-betweens to give this some gruesome personality.
That starts with the director, who is better behind the camera than perhaps with writing dialogue, the film not without razor-sharp style as she delivers us further and further down a rabbit hole of disturbing imagery and smart visual transitions. While the movie sticks more to its psychological thriller roots, it swings for the fences a few times with its raw depictions of gore, this mostly in the hands of The Cradle, played in the present by Graham Greene, who is entirely chilling as a deranged psychopath hunting young women. He’s the best thing going in this, despite his limited screen time.
Selma Blair is featured in the cast but is mostly an extended cameo, the movie centered on Oscar and Rebecca as they descend into madness, both looking for people they’ve lost. Yet here’s the thing, and it’s going to be divisive, the story is, despite its been-there-done-that feel, very compelling, especially the more it rolls on. It’s decidedly dark, unhinged, and stuffed with exceptional thriller bits that give this excellent moments of intelligent mystery, earned violence, and proper frights. However, where it loses some traction is with its two stars, who certainly put in the work but don’t have the presence the plot demands, neither delivering weighty enough performances to make this really hammer home the boom it needs.
That said, they are orbited by others who do, including Greene, but also an absolute standout turn from Trisha Rae Stahl, who spends the whole film ichily stuck in a chair, Bill Bellamy as Tony’s partner, and the always reliable Glenn Morshower as Tony’s boss, who makes everything he says sound like the very last word on the subject. Again though, I’m going to steer this back to Maria Gabriela Cardenas, who points her camera in all the right places and even offers a few clever in-on-the-genre jabs, including a blink or you’ll miss it nod to the overuse of opera arias as ironic background.
While A Dark Foe might not have originality in its corner, the more it heads towards its finale, the better it gets, ramping up some twists and terror that work heavily in its favor. Maybe not as significant as it could have been, it’s nonetheless a well-made effort that deserves a look. Recommended.