The Arbors

I had high hopes for this movie, the storyline sounded really interesting.. However, as seems to be the trend these days, it skirted around the main storyline, and the horror/monster was really just a metaphor for the rest of the film. There was very little action, the "monster" is never fully revealed, and it really is just a drama. As far as I'm concerned, not a horror movie, a psychological thriller, with a about 10 seconds of alien thrown in.

If it head to somewhere it's fine to be slow, the scary part just not to the point is main problem. I wonder no budget for those bloody scene? But in other perspective, the monster evolves due to the main lead dark side, I presume ? If something too hard to be accepted by audience, it won't get any applause in general. Haven't said that, still not that good objectively speaking.

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 concept is ok and the story line is reasonable. But the main person the lock Smith seems to really know how to act. Maybe a different actor could of saved this movie.

I stuck with it and to be honest I've seen worse.

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.