A strong and specific mood can cover up a multitude of sins in a film. Mood can hypnotize an audience, scare them, capture them in a rhythm and not let them go. In "Super Dark Times," director Kevin Phillips, in his feature film debut, creates a mood from the opening shot, a mood sustained wonderfully well, even if the third act moves into cliched territory. What matters in "Super Dark Times" is not what happens. We've seen it all before. What matters is how it happens, and how the landscape—a picturesque New England town—seeps into the characters' psyches as a kind of cold and lonely ...