No more on the Writer’s Strike unless it’s particularly amusing, poignant or significant. Instead, you get another review of a mediocre supernatural thriller. Don’t all cheer at once! You were going to get a review of David Lynch’s Lost Highway which I finally got around to seeing after 10 years of meaning to but as I still haven’t got a fucking clue what it’s about, you’ll have to wait.

Okay, so The Dark. Generally speaking, it’s pretty much run of the mill stuff although it’s well shot and pretty well acted and the story (adapted from - or should I say, loosely inpsired by - a novel called “Sheep” by Simon Maginn) is interesting, not least because it’s based on Welsh mythology and you don’t get many of those around these days, do you. It has all the requsite features of contemporary supernatural thrillers - creepy, soggy, dead girl; creepy, creaking house; creepy, bleating sheep; creepy, expositional handyman and so on. What saves it from being dire is good direction, performances, photography and a slightly out of place and interesting (if somewhat predictable) third act.

I didn’t mind any of these things. In fact I quite enjoyed the film. But it did manage to piss me off.

You see, the film’s set in Wales. So who’s in the cast? Well, we’ve got Maria Bello (American playing American), Sophie Stuckey (English playing American), Sean Bean (playing himself playing the role he had in Silent Hill without the awful accent), Maurice Roëves (Scottish playing Welsh) and Abigail Stone (Welsh playing Welsh). Okay, so it’s acting and these people are paid to be other people from other countries and Miss Stone, the only Welsh person in a primary role in a film that’s set in Wales, was not actually an actress before this - she was plucked from obscurity and a lifetime spent hanging around the bus-stops of Bridgend to play the soggy dead girl in her debut role. She does still have an obvious South Wales accent and it’s not set anywhere near there but only someone who knew would notice these things though and, well, it doesn’t really matter does it.

But the thing that really gets my goat (or sheep if you prefer) is that while it’s set in Wales, it’s not filmed in Wales. Oh sure, it looks like Wales - the cliff strata is right, the terrain is right (pretty much - the moors at the beginning aren’t but meh), slate walls and so on - but it’s not Wales. The filmmakers decided, obviously, that Wales didn’t look enough like Wales so shot it in Devon instead. Not Wales - bloody Devon. Russell T. Davies shooting Dr Who in Cardiff and passing it off as London is one thing but shooting in Devon and claiming it’s Wales is something else. Talk about taking the fucking piss!

Anyone would think it was all make-believe!