When people say a film has more style than substance, it’s generally meant as a criticism. But in the case of Darling, it couldn’t be higher praise.

Darling is the story of a girl and a house. The girl has been hired to house-sit for a rich woman, and the house she’s hired to stay in has a bit of a sordid history. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this,” the rich woman says, in a tone that says she’s more than happy to be saying it, before launching into the tragic story of the previous girl who worked there and met an untimely end by hurling herself off the balcony to the street below. With that bit of ugliness planted firmly in our minds, the girl is left alone to look after things.

Most of the beginning of the movie is taken up with the girl’s exploration of the house. She wanders slowly from one room to the next, pushing open doors inch by inch, as if they were made of marble rather than wood. In another movie, this seemingly aimless exploration might become tedious or boring, but director Mickey Keating’s incredible artistry keeps the tension high, even when nothing much is happening. The stark black and white images are haunting and beautiful, and the discordant soundtrack sets our nerves on edge.

The plot, such as it is, begins to take form when the Girl meets the Man, a chance encounter that sets the soundtrack jangling, and split second images flashing across the screen, echoing the girl’s visceral reaction to the man. Again the editing and soundtrack do most of the heavy lifting, putting us in the girl’s emotional space, making us see this seemingly normal guy, as an awful monster.

The girl follows the man to the place where he works, and when she goes back to the house all of her nightmares are about him.

Lauren Ashley Carter is incredible in the role of the girl. She has almost nothing to say, and very little to do for much of the film, but her haunted and haunting eyes are more unsettling than a whole legion of monsters. She is less a character than an archetype: the Woman in the Haunted House. She does not behave in a way that makes logical sense for a human person, but that is all part of the atmosphere of dread which Darling is weaving.

Darling walks a fine line between being an artsy experimental film and delivering a genuinely creepy horror experience. The bleak black and white images, the dissonant soundtrack, and the jarring edits, they all work together to create a real atmosphere of tension and dread. Of all the movies I saw at the Mile High Horror Film Festival, this was the only one that really and truly frightened me.