The Dark Valley

The Dark Valley is a 2014 Austrian-German Western drama film directed by Andreas Prochaska, based on Thomas Willmann's sole eponymous 2010 novel. The film stars Sam Riley as a lone traveler who ends up in a small town in the Alps, finding corruption and tyranny running rampant. It was selected as the Austrian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, but was not nominated. Plot The film opens with a scene of a scared young man and woman hiding in the basement of a wooden building. Footsteps are heard from above, and then several men find them, severely assaulting the man and then dragging them both away as the woman screams. Sometime later, a young stranger rides into a remote town somewhere in the Austrian Alps. Having introduced himself as a photographer, Mr Greider, he becomes the lodger of a widow whose husband and son suffered an untimely death. Soon, the newcomer learns that the entire town is firmly under the dominion of an aged rich man named Old Brenner and his six power-drunk sons. One day, the widow sends her daughter to town to run some errands. Greider is invited and decides to accompany young Luzi. As Luzi does her shopping, Greider asks for coffee and horseshoe nails. The brothers discover him at her side within the store, and command him to drink their schnapps. When he politely refuses by stating that he "doesn't drink," one of the brothers beats him into compliance. Later, one of the Brenner brothers dies in what looks like a freak logging accident. Soon this same fate befalls another of the brothers; he falls off a cliff having been blinded by a branch with nails on it. Old Brenner finds nails in his dead son's eyes. Since Greider is suspected to have had his hand in these accidents, he hides. Meanwhile, it is revealed that the Brenners walk in the footsteps of their father. At every local wedding they claim the (fictional) medieval prerogative of Primae noctis; only Greider's parents (the young couple from the opening scene) had refused to comply. For that defiance, the Brenners crucified Greider's father, but his mother managed to escape and find refuge in America. The local priest still supports what the Brenners do. Greider confronts the priest in private, revealing that he's come to crack down on the Brenners. He admits that he did kill the two Brenner sons. After telling the priest that he's next to die, Greider shoots him.