Premise: A gay couple in 1995 move into a small lake community where bad things start happening.
There's the kernel of a really great horror movie in this. I think it's clever to make an LGBTQ horror movie that isn't explicitly about the antagonists being homophobic. The couple's "value" is their otherness: the fact that the rest of the world ignores them. It's what makes them perfect targets to disappear. The movie reveals that this is part of a cycle, and the community has targeted different kinds of people over the years (ending the film with a middle eastern American family in 2005).
Unfortunately, the movie overall is pretty mediocre. It gave me "What if Hallmark made R-rated horror movies?" vibes. It's the kind of movie where every house looks like it's about to have an open house. None of them look lived in. The story relies on us knowing what the beats of a movie like this should be rather than pulling them off successfully in the movie. Like, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman - who is giving better than the movie deserves - going insane is not set up well in this movie. It's that annoying thing where characters start treating him like he's crazy before he's actually acting crazy. For example, his partner is angry for setting up a security system in the house even though they are a mixed-race gay couple in 1995 moving into a non-urban community where they don't know everyone. I'm sorry, but Bowyer-Chapman isn't the crazy one for thinking a security system is needed. Anyway, didn't something legitimate set off the alarm? It's just a sloppy screenplay that doesn't know what to do with its good ideas.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment