UK Release date: 28/9/2026
Psychological horror loves a good missing persons case. It’s the perfect narrative trapdoor: send someone looking for answers and watch them fall straight through their own unresolved trauma. That’s very much what drives Where Darkness Dwells, director Michael May’s moody indie noir that begins as an investigative thriller and slowly mutates into something far more unstable.
Trish Bostwick (Tara Perry) is an ambitious reporter stuck producing lightweight YouTube content when she’d clearly rather be chasing hard truths. A recent disappearance gives her the chance to prove herself, leading her to Wentworth – a secluded mental institute with centuries of history and a firm resistance to outside scrutiny. What she expects is rot. What she finds is… order. Clean corridors. Professional staff. A place that appears strangely normal.
And that’s where the unease begins.
Where Darkness Dwells smartly weaponises expectation. When you hear “remote asylum,” you anticipate peeling wallpaper and cackling patients in the shadows. Instead, Wentworth is composed, even welcoming. The horror isn’t in what’s broken, it’s in what feels too intact. That early subversion gives the first act a quiet confidence, allowing Perry’s performance to anchor the creeping sense that something is off long before the film tips its hand.
But then the woods arrive and things get a whole lot darker!!