The Arbors

Like other reviews have noted, if you expect this to be a creature feature, you're likely to be disappointed.

However, even though that's what I expected going into it, I wasn't severely disappointed. The creature makes for a good metaphor.

And again I agree with others, it's definitely a slow movie, but I didn't find it boring. I was curious how the protagonist would proceed and react.

I really don't believe it deserves as low of a score as it's received. I appreciated the all symbolism and I thought overall it was a well executed film.

The main character is not a likeable person and it takes too long for the story to unfold. People are being killed left and right and no one bothers to ask him why his hand is bandaged. The ending is lousy, too.

I thought it was quite good. Especially, because of the tiny budget. The creature is frightening and the majority of the acting was quite good. I'd love to go more into detail as to why this is a good film but I'm afraid I'll give to much away. I just say, give it a shot.

Don't really get the low rating. If you treat this movie accordinglly, as an independent horror flick, you probably will be satisfied in some way...of course if you have a taste for those kinda things) First of all this is not your conventional monster movie with lots of gore, blood and creature in a shot. Creature is present though, but its role is secondary. What is crucial here is a portrait of a small town under testing circumstances. So even the movie's atmosphere has more like psychological thriller's vibes, rather than horror's mood. Besides the fact that there are several characters in the story, the whole narative pivots around one person, which is an obvious standout here either as a character in the plot or as a performance. Drew Matthews really shines here, giving this authentic maybe even unic portrayal of socially awkward loner with a mysterious trauma in his childhood, which is unvailed only closer to the end. Fair warning here, the film's runtime is close to two hours, so if you don't enjoy the first half of it, there's no need for you to endure the whole thing, course you won't see anything drastically new or plotchanging in the second act. Everything is kinda logical here, considering indie horror-thriller logic occuring of course. Perhaps even for me the ending was a downside, despite the fact I kinda saw where it was going. Maybe it actually was the key problem for me, so I couldn't give the movie a higher mark. Deep in my heart I still wanted to see some sort of climax, a gamechanger, a little explotion in the narrative, something more emotional and powerful. Unfortunately the movie keeps its pace and its direction, not to say it makes it worse, it just made it a little bit underwhelming for me personally.

In a nutshell The Arbors is a good example of independent horror-thriller with grim and stringy depressing atmosphere and top-notch cinematography, it never tries to mimic anything, choses its own path and reaches its destination with dignity, which gives it credit. Visually creature is effective, especially keeping in mind that it's nothing like big money involved hollywood project, but an independent one, shot with tight budget. Also it's the director's full meter debut and he's setting a pretty high bar here, so I'm looking forward to seeing his following works.

The official trailer on YouTube makes this look like a monster movie. But if you're looking for a monster movie, this isn't it. There is a creature, a really cool looking scary one, but it's not on screen much and doesn't have much to do with the story. Before you spend time and money on this movie, just know what you're not getting.

What is this movie about? Hard to say. The story revolves around Ethan, who discovers the creature but is otherwise a very dull person who does nothing, sleeps during the day, and avoids most people. The only person Ethan likes is his younger brother, Shane. They still live in the rural town they grew up in and seem stuck there.

And now people in this small town start disappearing and turning up dead, their torn up bodies found scattered around town. And only Ethan knows why.

This movie - Not a monster movie! - is painfully slow, taking gobs of time for very little to happen as it simmers and creates atmosphere. There's very little action. Much of the storytelling occurs through dialogue, especially long voicemail messages. Pay attention to these long verbalizations, they're practically narration and the audience's best hope to interpret what's going on or decipher the characters' motivations. There are some chilling bits of scenes, particularly a single line right at the halfway point of the movie, that indicate something very spooky is going on, but good luck figuring out what that is. I have some theories, but those would be spoilers. (See Denis Villeneuve's underrated Enemy (2013). I suspect it inspired the writers of this movie!)

To enjoy this movie requires A LOT of patience. Be prepared.