Female-led survival horror flicks have been steadily making
the rounds over the last handful of years. The Shallows, Crawl, both entries in
the Metres Down series; I guess the recent resurgence in ‘prestige’ horror
cinema combined with the attempts to bring more female lead characters to the screen
have resulted in this intersection. But up until this point, these films have
thrived (or floundered) based on being short but sweet genre exercises, not
rising too far above the benchmark for man vs. nature yarns. And then this film
came along, yet another from the industrious (industrial?) Blumhouse production
line, which… basically recontextualises this entire trend.
Not that you’d get that impression for the first half of
this just-over-80-minute offering. While spiced up initially through a
predominant lack of dialogue, letting the visuals and Kiersey Clemons’ physical
acting carry the story, it presents itself as just another one of the pack. It
manages to convey an impressive amount of information visually, from Clemons’
Jenn and her survival tactics on the island, to the left-over belongings of its
previous castaways, to just how small the island itself ultimately is, but
through that lack of sound (unless Jenn finally catches that big fish, which is
certainly worth the celebration for one), it banks a lot on those
visuals to carry it.
That and the big-ass sea monster. Yeah, the other
major breaking point from the pack here is with the threat posed. Imagine if
Predator, a Turian, and the Amphibian Man had a sprawling slashfic-primed orgy,
and the egg that was left over hatched, and you’ve got a basic idea of what
this… thing looks like. The use of shadows and nimble balancing of CGI and
practical effects make the gradual reveal of the monster quite enthralling, if
not always shit-scary, making for easily the best use of aquatic predator I’ve
seen in any of these films yet.
Not that he ends up being the main pull, though, and this is
where the second half comes in. Once a couple other people make their way to
the island, both of whom are at least friends with Jenn, the film’s true
purpose reveals itself. What was once an eerie silence turns into
highly-pointed dialogue, essentially taking a base aspect of most horror films
and super-charging it with modern social context: They don’t believe that there
really is a monster.
While the execution is a little wobbly, as the level
of gaslighting here legitimately reaches ‘Jenn gets blamed for the weather’, it
manages to take a lingering vibe behind this more recent crop of survival
horror flicks and bring it roaring into the forefront. And honestly, it makes
for the best of the lot because it goes beyond quick yet effective thrills and
taps into some genuinely timely shit, almost as if gripping the audience
through sheer genre was just a happy little accident. It’s a parable on abuse
and how much burden of proof gets (unfairly) placed on victims that isn’t just
surprising, but astoundingly effective.
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