One of the interesting aspects of horror is that it pairs well with other genres. Because horror is so malleable, it is able to be complementary to other genres, allowing it to serve as a sort of filter through which different types of stories can be told. Pairing a crime thriller with a horror story has been done before, and it works because of how easy it can be to work with horror. Let’s face it, so much of life skirts around horror – the one wrong move/wrong place and wrong time sort of idea – that it’s not a stretch for other stories to become horrific.
THE DROWNED is a hybrid story, with its heart being a horror film, but around it a thriller.
THE DROWNED begins with a man on the run. We meet him as he is about to arrive at a clandestine location, where is to meet three others. He is clearly paranoid he’s been followed, but desperately careful. As searches the abandoned house to make certain no one else has discovered it, he hears someone screaming outside. He rushes out and searches, and finds blood, and a bracelet at the edge of a large lake. Moments later, two of his companions appear, begging the question – where is their fourth? As they talk over the crime they’ve just committed, their own distrust of one another starting to emerge, they all hear the frightened screams of a woman near the water. When they arrive, they find two strangers, who are about to make them question everything they believe to be true.
THE DROWNED is a film that comes together the more you think about it after watching, deceiving the viewer with what seems like a very straightforward tale. Its in delve into it that you discover the classical art, and mythology references being made, though, sadly, these things don’t add to what is a very muddlesome film.
The movie is well shot, and well acted, but the plot is very familiar, and honestly feels a bit silly, when you discover what the grand crime was. It feels as if that piece was the heart of the core idea for the film, but not much was built around to sustain it. There is so little work done to explain anything – from where the location is (it does feel like it matters) to why the crime happened, to how these people know one another, and finally, to why the things that happen in the film…happen.
It’s an interesting movie that asks a lot of its audience, and leans far too often on tropes we have seen before – and stretches believability with no explanation as to why we should believe it (It’s THERE, in the subtext, you realize, but you have to put a lot of work into reasoning it out). It is a wholly watchable film, and I’d never say it’s bad, at all, it just doesn’t feel like a full movie, but a short stretched too thin. There should have been much more work done to make this more engaging, and horrifying, but it’s just not there.
It’s an interesting film, but just isn’t one I’d recommend.
The Drowned will be available on Digital Download from 6th October in the UK, 7th October in the US & 8th October in ANZ
2 out of 5
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