‘Never After Dark’ Review: Dave Boyle’s Ghostly Spooker Will Keep You Guessing [B] SXSW
Seconds into writer/director Dave Boyle’s Never After Dark, one can already sense that this isn’t going to be a typical ghost story. Our lead, Airi (Shōgun’s Moeka Hoshi), is a traveling medium who offers to exorcise spirits out of haunted locations. The way she describes it is far more elegant: she guides spirits out of our human world and into the next. For Airi, ghosts don’t scare her. After all, she regularly speaks to her dead sister Miku (Kurumi Inagaki), who naturally appears through reflections, constantly accompanying her.
Airi’s newest job takes her to a countryside inn, which owner Teiko (Tae Kimura) claims is haunted by a grotesque male spirit with a gaping mouth (Mutsuo Yoshioka). Following her rule to never cross the veil at night, it doesn’t take long for Boyle to confirm to the audience that the Gaping Mouth Man is indeed a real apparition. Featuring careful cinematography by Patrick Ouziel, the film takes care in shrouding the ghostly threat in darkness. We never get a great look at his face, only partial images like his hands or a clear silhouette outline. It makes for a brooding, sinister presence that contrasts the neat architecture of the inn itself, led by production designer Yuji Hayashida.
Though the visuals speak for themselves, the film does struggle to deliver scares or a sense of buildup, at least in its first hour. It’s clear that Boyle is opting for a slow-burn approach, but when the film makes tangents to pass the time (Airi waiting for night to come) or incorporates dialogue that doesn’t add much to anything, you can only patiently hope that the film’s early puzzle pieces are going to somehow click together to form a picture.
And then the film takes a turn, with a reveal that I can’t say I have seen before in a story of this subgenre. It brings in a wave of new questions and mysteries, the kind that would make you lean forward and see where the answer takes you. Early on, Airi states that contrary to what most people would think, it’s the living people who scares her more. As Never After Dark slowly unveils its secrets and approaches a third act that feels both brutal and inevitable, Boyle shows his remarkable talent in fusing genres. It’s a tricky tightrope of delivering something fresh and original, without breaking any supernatural rules that were established early on.
Grounding it all together is a fantastic performance by Hoshi, who sells the more emotional aspects of the story. The writing suggests just enough of Airi’s relationship with her sister Miku, and the circumstances that led to Miku’s death, and it smartly informs why Airi does what she does and what truly terrifies her.
Never After Dark is a film that takes its time. Though it’s admittedly slow in its narrative momentum and never quite delivers heart-stopping scares, I can’t help but be impressed by where it ends up at the end. Boyle makes the most out of his singular location, and with a committed and compelling lead, he guides this unique J-horror with a steady hand.
Grade: B
This review is from the 2026 SXSW Film Festival.
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