Spiral

Featuring an interesting premise that possibly had more potential than what ended up on the screen, Spiral is a decently crafted horror thriller that follows a same-sex couple who move to a new town to start a new life but soon find the neighbourhood harbouring a dark secret, and makes for a mediocre social commentary on minority experience in American suburbia.

Directed by Kurtis David Harder, the script takes bits n pieces of ideas & inspirations from existing examples but is unable to concoct a coherent & cohesive narrative out of it. Everything in it from story to characters to twist n turns needed more reworking & refinement before making their way to the film canvas. Also not helping the cause is Harder's direction, for it is quite lacklustre.

It manages to be tense & suspenseful in bits n pieces and is also pervaded with an air of foreboding but the scares & thrills are rather generic, and the effect wears off sooner than expected. Add to that, the middle act is a slog that's unable to keep us invested in the proceedings and it doesn't take long to figure out where it's headed. Only consolation here are the good performances from the cast.

Overall, Spiral had all the ingredients to deliver a timely & progressive chiller but in the end, it turned out to be no different from earlier attempts that exhibited promise on paper but didn't have the creative vision to deliver what it was actually going for on the film celluloid. The film's only saving grace is the performances but even that isn't enough to mask the obvious shortcomings in the script for long. An average at best effort.

What happens when stereotypes, cliches and terrible writing take a road trip? They crash; slowly, predictably and painfully.

Not to be confused with the 2021 'Saw' spin-off movie also called 'Spiral', as I did.

Not only is Malik and Aaron a same-sex couple, but also an interracial couple, moving to a conservative small town back in 1995. With them is Aaron's daughter, Kayla. Soon after settling into their new home, they start noticing the townsfolk reacting weirdly. 'Spiral' is mysterious, creepy and foreboding.

'Spiral' is a psychological horror which becomes increasingly nerve-wrecking as the film develops, and one never really knows what to expect. Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman is very good as Malik, a black gay guy who soon feels out of place in their new home. Kayla also meets a young boy, Tyler, who seem to have a secret or two.

I really enjoyed the mystery, but the film falls apart during the finale. Without doing spoilers, all I can say is that there's way too much left unexplained. Who are these people? What are they? Why are they doing it? Why every ten years? I also couldn't help but wonder whether this might be homophobic propaganda. The film also does not have the ending I had hoped for. Pity. It started off so interesting...

Would I watch it again? No.

A mixed-race gay couple (and the one guy's daughter from a previous relationship) make the move as an alternative family unit to a small town where things are, and always have been, button down and traditional. At first, the couple feel excited that their plan to live a more down-to-earth life away from city stresses...but soon one of the guys begins to suspect that the community is hiding a sinister secret.

The set up is very familiar to horror fans and yet the first act of the movie plays out quite well. It's shot well, has convincing performances from the leads, and - with the help of a good sound engineer - effortlessly builds up the creep factor.

These plus points remain throughout the movie; however, the second act of the film drags and the third act seems to fall asleep at the wheel and veer dramatically from paranormal horror to Rosemary's Baby-esque paranoia, back again, then into some ham-fisted social commentary on both mental illness, racism, and homophobia before finally crashing headlong into the lovechild of Hereditary and Dracula.

As a result the ending feels unsatisfactory as a lot of the reveals feel tacked-on and limp. By the time it ended I felt like the writers tried to cover up a weak script by distracting the audience with some horror cliches and - if that didn't work - some clunky "message" that "racism is bad" and/or "homophobia is bad" and/or "mental illness is a shame".

Which is sad because if the film had had the courage of it's convictions a bit more I think it could have delivered way more effectively on what it set up in the first third. All in all, an okay-ish watch but that's being a bit on the generous side.

The moment any movie is compared to Hereditary or Vvitch, i try to avoid cos of the bore effect. The acting is good but the movie is very slow with a good twist.

In short, it tried hard to be like Get Out n felt more like Adam Green's Spiral but ended up more like Hereditary.