Archons

Archons is a psychological thrilller / horror that picks up the 'tried and true' theme of something lurking in the woods. The movie starts with a 35 minute slow burn where characters are developed. The story revolves around a three member band that was a borderline one-hit wonder years ago. They head off on a five day canoe/hike trip - you guessed it - deep into the woods. The upper Canadian Rockies in this case. The purpose is a spiritual journey to inspire their guitarist song writer's mental block. And like any credible rock band, they have enough drugs to fill a pharmacy. The lead vocalist - like any credible rock star - picks up a groupie as well along the way.

It then becomes apparent that something(s) are watching them. Ironically, the only time they are aware of being watched, however, is when they are high on acid. So the blur between real and 'not real' is central. The acting wasn't bad. But the plot moved.in a disjointed fashion and the last 10 minutes made little sense. As for the things in the woods - well, B-budget shines through there sadly. I feel like the movie could have been cool - but ended up falling flat.

Nick Szostakiwskyj's previous film, "Black Mountain Side" remains one of my favorite horror movies of the past decade, it is atmospheric, scary and interesting, so I was really excited to watch "Archons" and it was a big disappointment. Compared to the previous film, it is a huge falling. I don't know what happened but the writing is bad, the script is terrible and in the end, it doesn't make any sense. Every aspect of the film looks amateurish, and this is not to blame on the low budget, because Black Mountain Side is also low budget and is professional and serious. The look of the "creatures" is laughable, but the fact that they did not use CGI is something to praise. Other than that, there are no good points to talk about, just a big disappointment.

This movie just made me realise that evangelicals, scientologists, and dominionists are all gnostics, even the cult I grew up in and people who believe in the illuminati and aliens. What a permeating thread throughout history. Demons suppressing human and testing them in life and death. What a superstitious world we live in. Carl Sagan was right. Science is a candle in the demon haunted world.

A simple story of dead rockstars in a horrid limbo. I liked it.

I usually rate movies worse than the IMDb rating, this is one of the more glaring exceptions. I liked Black Mountain Side from the director and this one is in the same slow building atmospheric Lovecraft subgenre. It's not perfect, actors and pacing could have been better, but Szostakiwskyj creates a one of a kind mood, I very much enjoy, especially in the later half of the movie. I really hope we get more films of this kind from him!

If your into isolated location/horror strange creature films and accept these types of films for what they are, then this is defiantly worth a watch, i quite enjoyed it.

If you expect oscar winning acting from every film and are the sort of person to pick at small things, probaly not for you.