Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'The Block Island Sound' (2020)

This was pretty good Lovecraftian Horror. And again, Lovecraftian Horror isn't tentacle monsters, but rather a fantastic descent into madness. This movie depicts it so fucking well, and you're never exactly sure WHAT the fuck is going on. This could have also been cerebral in the way you're never perfectly sure if the main character is crazy or if supernatural shit is actually happening. However, I think that might have made the movie too boring and firmly answering that question is a part of a reveal that makes this movie so worth it. I'll talk about this more in the spoilers.

Which brings me to the fact that the pacing in this movie is terrible. It ALMOST broke my 30 minute rule, but technically something is always happening. The pacing is SO bad, it constantly had me on the edge of turning the film off but the movie was just good enough to keep me going. I mean, I feel like a solid 15 minutes would go by between the interesting shit when it happens. It's probably not that bad, especially toward the end when things speed up, but MAN it fucking feels like it.

But let me talk about that atmosphere. FUCK the atmosphere was so fucking good. They really got the feel of an island town. It's just as good as the atmosphere in The VVitch (2015). It really takes you into the movie and takes you in DEEP. And I love that setting. It's what worked so well for the TV show Midnight Mass (2021) (really fucking good, btw).

The acting was also better than you'd expect for horror. I don't know, I think they could win an award. Maybe a small one. Nothing big like an Oscar, but something.

So, I do recommend this movie. Some might be too bored. I have really bad ADHD and I made it through, so maybe not, but it's possible.

~

SPOILERS!!!

Let me first talk about the fact that firmly connecting the plot to the supernatural saved this movie. If it was possible the main character was just crazy, it would have felt more like The Scooby-Do Effect than cerebral horror. This, and the supernatural reveal really makes this movie. It kicks the pace up a notch when the pace was deeply lagging. So yes, the circumstances are supernatural.

So, the premise is that something supernatural is making the main character act strangely. This behavior is so similar to his alcoholic father that everyone plays it off like he's just got that problem too. However, something is just so off about it that you, the viewer, are pretty sure it's supernatural. They eventually elude to the fact that this supernatural force is asking for something like sacrifices. It's collecting things, animals at first, and this force doesn't care if it's alive or dead. We finally get to the end, and they replay the audio from a part where the female lead tells her daughter something about 'when studying fish, sometimes the fish dies.' So we're supposed to get the impression that this supernatural force is cosmic in nature and that it's studying us for our own good.

That sorta doesn't make sense. We're talking about a vastly superior entity of some kind that either has actual cosmic energies driving it, or vast technology incomprehensible to humans. If it's that advanced, I think it can figure out how to collect humans without killing them, and maybe that they don't live in the water and should be placed back on dry land. That means there's nothing benevolent about these entities. They could return us, unharmed, they just don't care. They're treating us significantly less than sentient. So the whole 'returning the fish but sometimes it dies' doesn't really track. A fisherman intent on returning the fish isn't trying to kill it, he's just using inferior technology. These things could return us unharmed, they just don't.

So, yeah. Good movie, might be too boring for you, but give it a shot.