The Drownsman

When I started watching this I was seriously considering giving up on it and watching something else. I checked my computer, surfed the web, not paying it full attention. (note, this is something I extremely rarely do) But it got hold of me just enough for me to watch it to the end.

(maybe I shouldn't have, it did not give me much)

The make up, the effects, the acting, everything is actually not bad, but the sum of it is just not very good, and not nearly entertaining enough. The story has it's kind of cool elements, but mostly it's not much to talk about.

The Drownsman is sort of like 'Nightmare on Elm Street' with water instead of dreams.

It's a shame this is not better, because I think it could have been pretty cool, had it just been.. better. And I can't really say what it is missing, either. I think it might have something to do with the premise. I don't want to spoil anything, but the parts happening in "the other place" didn't do it for me at all. Boring and uninspired.

I will say this though, good job to the actors! These girls must have been cold and wet a lot shooting this. Well done. Shame the movie isn't better.

The Drownsman has a few nice concepts, while they might not be novel, these are still intriguing to some degree. It creates a good visual with simple use of water and contrasting light. The characters are predictable in their looks or bad decisions, yet surprisingly audiences could warm up to them. If there's anything that hampers the movie, it dives too much to the genre familiarities, to the point that some scenes are near identical with other horror flicks.

Madison (Michelle Mylett) has awkward accident as she slips in a pier and nearly dies from drowning. As she wakes up she is haunted by an entity that dwells on water. Things escalate as her friends try to perform faux cleansing and unwittingly share the cursed stalking. The movie protagonists consist of all female, almost like a sorority in jeopardy. Acting is decent overall, and it's good to say that the movie treats its cast with appreciation, it doesn't put them on bras and panties and splash some water on them, even though it has all the excuses to do so.

The lead Michelle Mylett is pretty good, although these girls can be interchangeable at times. The personalities don't stand out much, they are what audiences would expect from any horror films. You'd have the lead who is a victim and her skeptical friends, eventually they all run and scream the same. In fact The Drownsman borrows many other aspects from previous works like Final Destination or Friday the 13th. There's a random puddle, it may be a trap put by psychopath ghost to trip someone and brutally drown them.

Some of the scenes might not hit the mark, especially those which inspired by genre clichés such as ignored premonition or creepy warning by equally creepy characters. They come across as a tad silly, furthermore the logic isn't exactly neatly constructed. The antagonist might appear literally from a spill, but then again human body is mostly water, what if someone pees or does it have to be normal water. So many questions unresolved to plot holes.

While it's overly familiar and bizarre at some points, the movie looks good and it sprinkles enough mystery to pique audiences' curiosity, at least for a rental or movie night.

A solid horror flick that gets hurt because there are a couple of plot holes that you sort of can't stop thinking about.

The plot involves Madison, played well by Michelle Mylett, who falls into the water during an engagement party for her best friend and has a horrifying vision of some sort of monster.

Cut to a year later, and it turns out this event has given Madison an extreme case of aquaphobia, since she believes that every time she touches water the monster appears. Her friends try to to cure her of this fear but it turns out that it may be true, that she may be haunted by the spirit of Sebastian Donner, The Drownsman, a supernatural being who travels only in water...

The movie is solid. Good acting all around, The Drownsman is introduced to us in a well done prelude and is generally creepy all around. The film doesn't meander -- this is not one of those "50 minutes of meaningless exposition and then 1/2 hour of the actual movie" films. It gets going right away and doesn't let up. Couple of nice twists to keep interesting strong.

Biggest problem is a couple of plot details that are hard to ignore. First of all, Madison's aquaphobia is extreme -- she can't drink water (takes fluids through an IV), she can't leave the house if it's raining (causing her to miss her best friend's wedding in which she was supposed to be Maid of Honor), and just a drip sends her into a panic. And yet... she has spotlessly clean skin, clothes, and obviously recently coiffed and washed hair. I know you're supposed to just "go with it" and it's "only a movie," but when they take SO MUCH EFFORT into making her extreme aquaphobia be a major plot point and then she seems to have no problem washing herself... well, it's hard not to think about it all the time.

Same goes for the "missed wedding." Her missing the wedding is the catalyst for her friends trying to help, and the bride comes barging into the house still in her dress. But... the movie takes places in the two or three days after the wedding. No Honeymoon? No husband concerned about his new bride leaving him right after the wedding? Again, even with the "it's just a movie" it's hard not to thing about that.

Make the aquaphobia a little less overwhelming and eliminate the wedding and I suspect there will be a lot less eye-rolling. None the less, still a solid film and worth checking out.

The Drownsman: Madison has strange dreams after nearly drowning; a dark figure tries to drown her in a glass tank basement. Developing extreme hydrophobia she misses her best friends wedding, unable to leave her house due to rain. Her friends plan an intervention getting a psychic to perform a ritual, things backfire when the dark figure is summoned up. They now discover that he is the ghost of a actual serial killer who drowned his victims. The Drownsman is now out to slay Madison and her friends. Hands reach out of washing machines, a woman is dragged into a spilled water on a table and transported to the killer's lair. So-so effects with a few frights and a dark secret is revealed. Written and directed by Chad Archibald (Bite, Ejecta) who gives us a watchable horror mystery. 5.5/10.

'The Drownsman' (2014) is an interminably soggy, low budget, zero voltage horror film about the tepid, water-logged exploits of a rather grubby, permanently damp Andrew WK-looking freak who gets his nefarious jollies by drowning nubile young females which proved to be about as diverting as boiling an egg, but without the edifying sustenance. Even if you distilled the entire film down to a 2 minute horror shot, it wouldn't scare the furry training pants off a baby meerkat!