![]() ![]() From the tormented parents of “The Exorcist” and “The Omen” to the grieving figures of “The Sixth Sense” and “The Others” to the bereaved families of “Hereditary” and “The Babadook,” fear and sadness, regret and panic go hand in hand. This aspect reminds the viewer of the melancholia so crucial to effective horror. Not only is Spiral unsettling, but it is also heartbreaking to watch Malik’s franticness and fear as he steadily loses what he holds dear. As the film progresses, tensions rise while love and understanding are eroded. Slow-paced sequences in the house emphasize Malik’s isolation, while cinematographer Bradley Stuckel (“Still/Born”) captures the landscape with a frosty starkness that expresses the lack of empathy Malik encounters from the neighbors as well as his family. Central to this is Malik’s increasing anguish as his search for answers lead to more questions. Little is made explicit, but director Kurtis David Harder (“Incontrol”) creates a deeply unsettling atmosphere. Like Malik, Aaron’s trauma is linked to his sexuality, as during the court battle he and Malik were described being seen as ‘unsuitable parents.’ Despite the welcoming locals, micro-aggressions and prejudices swiftly unsettle Malik, who is often left alone in the house during the day. Both have their traumas: Malik’s is the attack that we see at the beginning, while Aaron’s divorce led to a difficult custody battle for Kayla. Aaron is a businessman and Malik a struggling writer. Set in the mid-90s, Spiral portrays same sex couple Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, “Dirty Grandpa”) and Aaron (Ari Cohen, “ It”), who move to a new town with Aaron’s daughter Kayla (Jennifer Laporte, “West of Hell”). The end result is one of the most chilling and unsettling films of FrightFest 2019. From there, events spiral (sorry) into an eerie, menacing folk horror of cult, prejudice and scapegoating, in a manner that combines the best elements of “ Get Out” and “ Hereditary.” The film exposes prejudice with scalpel-like precision, within a context of drip-feed menace that steadily engulfs the characters. □ Sign up for our weekly email newsletter with movie recommendations available to stream.Like the more prominent “ It: Chapter Two,” Spiral opens with a homophobic attack, one that is shown in all its distressing viciousness. That someone will use that fear against us-they already are. We just exploit it.” And that’s the real horror. Late in the movie, one character says, “it’s human nature… fear. The scares are genuine-both in relation to its potential supernatural elements and the experience of being different in a world that craves “normalcy”. Though I wish it explored its a lore a little more-or at least allowed us to experience the horrors it brings about- Spiral a quietly impressive low-budget foray into social horror. Still, the balance of mystery to horror to character-rooted social commentary is impressive in John Poliquin and Colin Minihan‘s screenplay. ![]() It’s slow-burn horror at its finest, which makes the cheaper jump scares frustratingly out of place. There is so much to appreciate in Spiral, in particular the well-wrought dark atmosphere of dread that director Kurtis David Harder achieves through Bradley Stuckel‘s well-thought out cinematography and Avery Kentis’ ominous score. However, his dread isn’t just because of a few homophobic micro-aggressions, something more is afoot. Though the initial reception is warm, especially from their new neighbors Tiffany ( Chandra West) and Marshal ( Lochlyn Munro), Malik feels the dread of being the one different person-in his case, a queer black man-in a town. Spiral follows Malik ( Jeffrey Boyer-Chapman) and his boyfriend Aaron ( Ari Cohen) as they move from the big city to a small suburban town to live out their dreams of a “normal” existence along with Aaron’s 16-year-old daughter Kayla ( Jennifer Laporte). ![]() That feeling is what Spiral, a new horror streaming on Shudder, taps into. For some of us, living day to day is a horror movie in itself. “People don’t change… they just get better at hiding how they feel.” It only makes sense that horror, a genre about one of the most primal human emotions, is one of the best grounds to explore social issues-as recently as Get Out or as far back as Night of the Living Dead. Chloé Zhao makes Nomadland‘s melancholic but hopeful story of nomads traversing the American West a stunningly complex character study of life on the margins of society. ![]()
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