The Ghost and the Darkness

The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) is a Stephen Hopkins adventure thriller you can watch online on iFILM. Engineer John Patterson arrives in East Africa to bridge the Tsavo river, and his work camp starts losing men almost at once — to a pair of lions that hunt like nothing he has seen.

These two don't behave like ordinary predators. They strike after dark, slip past the fires and thorn fences, drag men out of their tents, and seem to toy with the crew. The workers name them the Ghost and the Darkness and decide they aren't really animals at all. Patterson builds traps, misses his shots, and starts to crack, so a celebrated hunter, Charles Remington, is brought in to face a quarry that finally outmatches him. Michael Douglas plays Remington, Val Kilmer is Patterson, and Tom Wilkinson is the impatient railway financier.

It draws on the true Tsavo man-eaters that stalled the Uganda Railway in the late 1890s, and the sound design took home an Oscar — here a roar in the black does more damage than any chase. Worth a look if you like the hunt flipped, with people as the prey. Stream The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) online on iFILM.