I’ll never forget what my dad said every time the credits rolled on movies like “Brave the Dark” growing up: “You know, that was just a good movie. You didn’t have to think about it.” Indeed, watching it, you’re transported back to the heavy-handed gossamer days of the ’90s inspirational teacher movie: your “Deads Poet Society,” your “Misters Holland’s Opus,” your “Goods Will Hunting.” Granted, director Damien Harris doesn’t quite squeeze the pathos and complication of those more bittersweet works here; that’d require something thornier than something Christian movie studio Angel Studios want to give to their captive audience of evangelicals. But the nuts and bolts essentially work, even as it threatens to drown itself in syrupy sentiment.
Based on a true story co-written by its subject (Nathan Deen), “Brave the Dark” charts the growing bond between a kind rural Pennsylvania high school teacher named Stan Deen (Damien’s brother Jared Harris, stalwartly chewing his way through a dodgy Midwestern accent) and troubled teen Nate (“IT”‘s Nicholas Hamilton), a handsome but haunted orphan who’s hidden the fact that he lives in his car from his classmates. He runs track and field for the free showers, wears a leather jacket, and hangs around with the wrong crowd—the latter of which lands him in hot water when he alone is arrested for breaking and entering and put in jail. Deen, concerned for the boy, reaches out to Nate’s grandparents; they’re cold, caring little for the boy save as a burdensome reminder of an unspoken past tragedy involving his late mother. Rather than pulling him out of school, Stan opts to take Nate under his wing, giving him room and board provided he works to graduate.
In classic fashion for these kinds of films, the teacher-student bond ends up becoming healing and transformative for both of them: the lonely Stan finds purpose in the wake of his mother’s passing, and the volatile Nate begins to thrive in a supportive environment. Flashbacks allude to immense tragedy in Nate’s past (images of a blood-splattered child being cleaned, a frightened mother standing over a bridge), which come to a head in the film’s despairing yet hopeful climax. “Brave the Dark” plays all the Hallmark hits of an uncomplicated weepie, so there are zero surprises here. The film’s budget often peeks through, in a dodgy green-screen here or an awkwardly color-graded flashback there; Damien Harris blocks scenes and shoots actors with an almost trepidatious distance. But he directs performances well enough, and knows how to get yeoman’s work out of his sparse cast.
Harris, as always, imbues his characters with a wearied conviction, which goes a long way towards making Stan feel a bit more layered than the feel-good Ned Flanders type the script saddles him with. He’s a saint, simply put, the kind of pot-bellied nice guy who seems put on this earth to model a self-effacing virtue young people should aspire to. And indeed, the world would be a better place if there were more Stans in the world. What charms exist in the movie come from Harris’ blushing shrugs and wry smiles, the aw-shucks demeanor of a man who’s just happy to be helping people and delivers creaky dad jokes with all the relish of your fun uncle at Thanksgiving.
As for Hamilton, he does the best with what he’s given, which is to be a twinkified version of James Dean whose greatest crimes are playing hooky and moping. (Oh, and hanging out with a group of miscreants who, get this, smoke cigarettes!) He and Harris struggle to build cohesive chemistry together, but on their own they both hold up their respective scenes with admirable heft. (One sequence, in which an unaccompanied Nate starts dancing to music while painting the stage for Stan’s latest play, threatens to turn this into the evangelical “High School Musical.”)
Much like their prior entry “Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot,” “Brave the Dark” feels like Angel Studios wisely backing away from the right-wing provocations of QAnon-adjacent actioners like their hit “Sound of Freedom” towards more treacly, family-friendly, wholesome fare. These are feel good stories based on true acts of undersung kindness that are kind of hard to impeach, even as it’s tempting to question the motives of a studio built on ideological goals of preaching to the evangelical choir. But “Brave the Dark” rarely succumbs to that kind of proselytizing: a crucifix prominently hangs on the rear-view mirror of a car in flashback, and Harris’ Deen clasps his hands and closes his eyes in a moment of not-quite-prayer at the film’s lowest moments. That’s it. It’s content instead to be a movie about a real-life Good Samaritan, and an honest one at that. Angel Studios’ mission statement is to release films that “amplify light”; if they keep to simple stories like this, I might just start to believe them.
