The perfect Italian hybrid of Dogtooth and 10 Cloverfield Lane, Darkness (original title, Buio) creates an insular world where fiction rules over fact. Stella (Denise Tantucci) and her two younger sisters Luce (Gaia Bocci) and the mute Aria (Olimpia Tosatto) live under their father’s (Valerio Binasco) tyrannical rule. In their countryside home, he has them convinced that the apocalypse has arrived, the sun scalding people’s eyes out and causing their skin and limbs to burn away. The young girls must remain literally and metaphorically in the dark.

The father’s account of events is immediately suspect, as he claims that women cannot withstand the sun’s super-heated rays following a solar explosion years before, spinning tall tales about his having to venture out to fight and kill for every scrap of food that he brings to the table. The girls’ isolation is total; they must remain inside at all times, the windows covered but for one day a year, ‘Air Day’, when they are allowed to wear helmets with blacked-out goggles to get but the faintest peek at sunlight.

The film written and directed by Emanuela Rossi juggles the ostensible threat of an apocalyptic unknown against the very real threat of a domineering father, who frequently returns to fear-mongering and gaslighting to control his children and manipulate their thoughts. Rossi’s script explores the lengths that a parent will go to preserve the innocence, purity, and susceptibility of their children, often at the expense of their growth and mental health.Rossi carefully peels back the curtain on the depravity of the man of the house, who engages in not-so-subtle acts of sexually exploiting his children, by making them compete to become the “queen of the house”, grooming them for romantic partnership. As the patriarch’s revolting intentions become clear, his need to foster their reliance upon him grows. Though Luce is ensnared by his very Old Testament version of events, Stella knows firsthand the manipulative reign of their father and begins to explore the outside world, doing whatever she can to free her little sisters from their father’s hand.

Directed with stylistic abandon and a knack for getting under the skin of its female protagonist, Darkness is an impressive debut for Rossi. Managing to tell the story of a young woman coming into her own skin under the oppressive thumb of a controlling religious zealot of a father, Darkness uses the far-fetched example of a hideaway doomsday family to tell a tale with universal impact. The script explores just how difficult it is to break oneself free mentally from the trauma of gaslighting; how even when you know something isn’t real, it’s still difficult to take steps to prove that fact to yourself. To underscore this point, Rossi infects her film with a sense of youthful exploration, particularly when the three girls are by themselves, experimenting with what it means to be young women. Stripped of their modest white nightgowns, they dance, bask under UV lights, and tell stories of the world before, including Stella’s old romantic flame.

The duality of the story, with its world of fact and fiction, real and unreal, is made manifest in Marco Graziaplena’s cinematography, which is either illuminated by faint candlelight or blasted with sunlight. There’s an angelic quality to the way the film uses light, which speaks to the oppression of the darkness and the lies that fester there and the all encompassing power of truth. So too does the soundtrack reflect this duality, shuffling between a moody foreboding score and infectious Italian house music. The greatest duality though lies with Stella, both child and young adult alike, who sees her world more and more for what is it is but is not powerful enough yet to take control. In this struggle, Stella must search the darkness to uncover her feminine power and, through that, the real truth.

CONCLUSION: A powerful debut from Italian writer-director Emanuela Rossi, ‘Darkness’ uses a manufactured threat to speak to the potency of parental gaslighting as a headstrong daughter attempts to break from the bondage of manipulation. Written and performed with great sensitivity, Rossi tackles an unsettling topic with genre appeal.