Dark Encounter

A domestic puzzle folded into an intense thriller is given a further unsettling and haunting intergalactic sheen in writer/director Carl Strathie's solid follow-up to his space opera Solis. A year after the mysterious disappearance of their eight-year-old daughter, grieving Laura Fraser and Mel Raido gather with friends and family for her memorial service. But they are soon exposed to inexplicable phenomena, the origin seemingly being visitors from another world. This budget-conscious sci-fi horror makes the most of its accomplished cast (also including Vincent Regan, Alice Lowe and Grant Masters) and atmospheric forest setting (Yorkshire standing in for small-town Pennsylvania). Spun around an intriguing premise, Strathie's film cleverly draws on genre staples such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind as he deflects attention away from the core twist and the ultimate reveal.