A Dark Song

A grieving mother rents an isolated Welsh house and hires an occultist to perform a months-long ritual, properly, with all of the tedium included.

That is the film's actual subject. The Abramelin operation requires purification, fasting, sleep deprivation, chalk circles that cannot be broken, and total isolation for months, and Liam Gavin films the boredom and the discipline rather than skipping to the result.

Steve Oram plays Solomon as a rude, unglamorous professional who is quite possibly a fraud, and Catherine Walker plays a woman who has lied to him about what she wants.

The relationship between them is the horror. He is exploiting her and she is using him and neither can leave the house.

The last five minutes divide people completely. It is either a betrayal of everything before it or the only possible ending.