Humans Haven’t Changed In 45,000 Years. We Can Now.

Monday, 14 July 2025, 9:30 am
Opinion: Martin LeFevre - Meditations

“Out of Darkness” is billed as a “prehistoric horror film.” But it’s actually a projection from the present and a distorted mirror into the past. Filmed in the highlands of Scotland, it’s a terrifying study of the human psyche, which hasn’t essentially changed since the first Homo sapiens bands encountered the primordial Neanderthals.

With one blazingly beautiful exception – a long shot of a green, undulating curtain of the aurora – the landscapes are bleak, foreboding and hostile. They’re meant to convey the fear, even terror that small, exposed groups of people felt in unknown wilderness. And doubt in the viewer about what the real threats of the primeval past were, and how darkness is still projected onto nature and others.

At a core level, “Out of Darkness” is an elliptical examination of evil. One by one, beginning with the boy in the group, members of the tiny tribe are snatched away, seemingly by a supernatural force that moves near the speed of light in the darkness.

“You can’t escape a demon,” the elder of the band intones, and then insists that a young woman, who joined the group as a “stray” and has just begun menstruating, should be sacrificed because her period is attracting the evil.

Without giving too much away, others are snatched, or killed, like the arrogant leader, who says, “I am light,” and promises to lead them to safety and dominion over the new land.

Up to and beyond this point, the movie leads the viewer to believe something very metaphysically dark is happening, and that the entire band will be picked off. But in a rather prosaic turn of events, it turns out that they have entered the territory of a small band of Neanderthals, who haven’t killed the boy, but sheltered and fed him in their cave.

The story then shifts into being an ordinary projection of evil onto the ultimate “other” (Neanderthals were a different species of human that survived across Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years). The movie’s choppiness leaves the viewer perplexed and unsatisfied, and the ending is contrived.

In so-called real life, as a young man I took a friend who had never been backpacking on a trip into the High Sierra. The first two nights were enjoyable and uneventful. She got her period on the third night, and we argued.

It was a minor squabble, but she left the fire I’d made on the floodplain of a river, saying she had to urinate.

When she didn’t return after nearly 10 minutes I grew concerned and called her name. No answer. Called again, more insistently. No answer. Having backpacked alone in the wilderness, and confronted my primal fears, a fear that something had happened to her rose quickly and powerfully.

Suddenly I was “seeing” animals hunched along the bank 25 meters away – wolves. I shouted in real fear: Jan!

From the middle of the perceived pack came a soft, sing-songy, fully controlled reply -- a strung out “yes.” Instantly my fear was replaced by intense anger: “What the hell are you doing?”

Back at the fire, she first denied doing anything, but then admitted that she had known since she was in her early teens that she was able to project images and thoughts into other peoples’ minds, a power that was intensified when she was menstruating.

She was angry with me and deliberately wanted to provoke fear, even terror. I believed her, and she apologized. I let it go, and the excursion ended well.

Later, I realized that this is what indigenous people, like Australian Aborigines, mean by shape shifting. It isn’t supernatural at all, but a rare ability of the human mind in a few people to project images into the minds of other people, for purposes of manipulation and control.

That’s inherently dark, but not necessarily evil. What is evil, and why does it still rule the human mind and society? Trump, besotted with ego and hatred, clearly has evil coursing through him, as does Putin, Netanyahu and Xi. Clearly, power is intrinsically evil; the more power is concentrated, the more evil there is.

It’s essential to understand that while evil has its own semi-independent reality and intentions, it’s a product of the human mind, and not a cosmological reality. There is no “battle between good and evil” in the universe, and to the extent there is in us, we’re still losing to war.

“Out of Darkness” flirts with and skirts around the reality of evil, and settles on comfortable conventions about projection. As true as they are, the film, and the philosophies of evil I’m aware of, don’t come near larger, very pressing questions.

Why haven’t we changed in 45,000 years, and emerged from our self-made darkness? Why are we still projecting darkness the other, and making war, when, as the film concludes, “they aren’t things; they are just like us?”

Note:

[link to trailer of “Out of Darkness”]

Martin LeFevre

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Martin LeFevre - Meditations

Scoop Contributor

Martin LeFevre is a contemplative and philosopher.

His sui generis “Meditations” explore spiritual, philosophical and political questions relating to the polycrisis facing humanity.

lefevremartin77@gmail