Out of Darkness

Cinematic depictions of ancient or near-ancient times have come a long way since the likes of 1960s cheese classics like “Prehistoric Women” and “Creatures That Time Forgot,” pictures that put the curvaceous likes of Martine Beswick and Julie Ege into animal skins and made them grunt in no particular lingo and pivot provocatively as they fled all manner of primordial danger. The new Scottish near-horror picture “Out of Darkness,” set 45,000 years prior to the present day, has copious dialogue in a language called “Tola,” concocted by a linguist and archeologist based on real research and everything. It also doesn’t have a cheesy or cheesecake-oriented bone in its body — in the cold climes of this picture every character is layered up to the extent that secondary sexual characteristics have no chance of making themselves known. And in any event, in their increasingly desperate efforts to survive, sensual activity is the furthest from everyone’s mind.