Take Back the Night (2022)

Directed by Gia Elliot. Starring Emma Fitzpatrick, Angela Gulner, Jennifer Lafleur, Sibongile Mlambo, Nat D’Amico.

At a party, a young woman (Fitzpatrick) gets drunk and has sex with a stranger in a bathroom, and on her sloshed walk home, a monster attacks her. She comes to in a hospital while being interviewed by a detective, and she’s candid about what she can remember, but is distressed to find that the detective doesn’t believe the story, and the media turns on her. Low-budget horror piece works better as a parable, stirring up the dread of assault victims risking a great deal to come forward but being dismissed or falsely discredited, but the story is incomplete, missing key pieces of information related to character relationships and the motives of certain individuals (representational symbol alert: the protagonist is the only person onscreen who’s even given a name). Then there’s the fatal miscalculation in the final act when we see too much of the monster, “rules” suddenly apply to defeating it, and the movie exits on a frustratingly vague note. Had the concept been fleshed out more, it might have been a minor allegorical (alleg-horror-cal?) gem, but as is, it’s an insufficient, frustrating near-miss.

44/100