🟥 Spiral (2019) Review - Father Cringe Comes to Preach | Film Waffle

  

Spiral (2019) directed by Kurtis David Harder

I had reserved this slot for Leviticus by Adrian Chiarella, but that plan fell through. Also I got sick so this is a month late. Whoops. 

Today we are taking a look at a 2019 Canadian horror thriller named Spiral that I pulled straight from Wikipedia's hairy behind. And, oh boy, I got bad vibes in the first five minutes. 

"This is one of them insufferably pinky-out films for Disney Adults, isn't it?"

Mhmm. Yes. Let's continually spout platitudes about how society is scared of differences. But don't be afraid to be yourself! The bravest thing you can do is live out and proud!

All that same, tired old shit that your lefty aunt shares on Facebook before stumbling into yet another flamewar with your righty grandpappy.

Lord have mercy. 

I think I gotta take the old man's side on this one, Auntie. 

This movie feels very much like a product of the mid-to-late 2010s. Like it was dreamed up by an upper-class white woman focus group deep in the trenches of #Resist politics.

Analyzed. Synthesized. Manufactured in a lab somewhere.

Was this your trial run, Wuhan?

Quick Summary

Old gay Aaron and his teenage daughter Kayla relocate up north to a small town in Canada Illinois. Joining them is young gay and Aaron's partner/S.O./husband Malik. Basically just fancy terms for a live-in boyfriend considering the year is 1995.

Anywho, the trio move into a remarkably fancy house in a remarkably fancy neighborhood. There they meet their new, creepy neighbors.

Said creepy neighbors invite the three to neighborhood bonfires, give them a plant as a housewarming gift, and share stories about their jobs and family life.

Gosh! How creepy! How bizarre! Being NICE.

Malik, however, sees through this facade of hospitality. He knows they are up to no good! Must be those bottom senses tingling.

Determined to get to the. Bottom. Of this nonexistent phenomenon and to devour a piece of one grieving neighbor's ass, Malik sets out on a mission to find the source of his unease.

Story & Characters

Stop me if you've heard this one.

A family is starting a new life. Weird stuff starts happening around them. One partner, usually the wife, slowly descends into paranoia and craziness. Meanwhile the father is steadfast in his skepticism to a comical degree.

A real Eustace.

That's basically the trope we have going on here with a couple gays substituted for the usual parent roles. And, of course, the feminine gay is the wife figure. Silly question to even ask.

Now, we love some gay dads. I wish this was explored more in gay media. Preferably with more adopted kids and less I-destroyed-my-family-because-I-was-too-chicken-shit-to-admit-I-was-gay-before-tying-the-knot-and-knocking-up-a-girl, but that might be asking too much of writers these days. 

Less talk of threesomes would also be appreciated. This movie whipped that one out, and I was like, welp, there goes my vision of a wholesome gay family unit. Fuck me.

Yet, despite replacing the wife with a feminine gay queen, the trope is so plain. So predictable. So lacking in creativity or subversion. A cliche is born.

Maybe the director thought swapping the sexes was a bold statement that didn't need any additional variety? Which, to be fair, Hellbent took the same approach, and it turned out all right. But why? Well, my theory is that the mechanics of Slasher Horrors are fundamentally different from the Horror Thrillers.

Slasher Horrors are focused on the fun of the kills. They lure you in to live out fantasies of power and sex. That is why characters in these movies are always young adults. That age when the hormones are firing full throttle. Camp counselors and babysitters.

Horror Thrillers, rather than being alluring, push audiences into the tension and lock the door. The focus is on character development and the emotions stemming from it. The cast is often middle-aged. They revolve around real, adult issues that accompany the scares. Families. Parenting. Difficulty relating to sons and daughters.

It is much easier, and infinitely more accessible, to be lured into a fantasy than to be pushed into another person's daily struggles. That's why slashers are more often described as "fun," not "scary." 

The homosexual male fantasy is radically different than the heterosexual male fantasy. Thus, Hellbent didn't need to radically alter the slasher trope to become unique.

But Spiral's Malik is simply a housewife. If the movie didn't insist on shoving his history of homophobic violence in my face, he may as well have been a woman.

In the Hellbent's case, swapping the traditional sexes elevates the trope with a fresh perspective. In Spiral, the swap also happens, but the effect is absent.

And what gets me is that I don't object to treating homosexual relationships as natural in media. Placing a pair of gay dads into traditional, monogamous, heterosexual settings is something I crave in media. A relationship that is. No explanation or commentary necessary.

But that's not what was done here. In fact, it's the complete opposite. Spiral is clearing trying to say a LOT. It just sucks at harmonizing that goal with the genre and trope that it built a foundation from.

Digging deeper into that point, Spiral's characters are pathetically weak. Somehow I watched 1.5 hours of runtime and still felt like I knew piss all about who the characters were or what drove them.

Malik is a walking trauma factory and part-time retard. The dude's only history other than being a former cross-dresser is a character wound from the past: he and his former boyfriend were attacked while smooching in the parking lot of an old movie theater. I know this because the movie opens with a flashback of the assault. Later, the film shows it again. And again. And again. And again.

Spiral. Bro. I get it. Stop blinding me with flashbacks and get on with it.

This PTSD is a catalyst for Malik's descent into insanity when, a couple days after their move, Malik finds the word "FAGGOTS" spray-painted on their living room wall.

Bitch. You told one lady y'all were gays, and she was perfectly chill about it. You expect me to believe people were breaking in and vandalizing your house the very next day?

Is this film set in the 1990s or the 1920s? Draw a poop swastika on the wall too while you're at it. Really drive it home. Hamfist that shit right up my arse, and make it fun. The film disagrees. It is going to tell its very serious story very seriously. Cringe without self-awareness. 

Malik censors the word with his fat ass, and when he tries to repeat it in a conversation, a character, supposedly a man, interrupts Malik because his heart can't take it. 

What are we? Twelve? 

Malik's retardation comes out when, instead of showing the vandalism to Aaron, Malik paints over the word and says fuck all about it. 

But don't you worry. Malik also shells out a couple grand for a home security system. Does he tell Aaron about that either? No! Of course not. Did I mention that our resident male-wife makes barely any money?

Like. WHY?!

You had your home broken into and vandalized. Don't you think you should be telling your man? 

"Yo, Aaron. Someone got into our house and sprayed 'FAGGOTS' on the wall. Maybe we should think about moving before we get too settled down here."

If you're too damn spineless to alert Daddy Aaron for your own sake, Malik, maybe do it for Kayla? Your surrogate step-daughter?

Rather than that common-sense approach, Malik makes the arbitrary decision to transform into fucking Nancy Drew. Investigating rooms that he isn't supposed to be in. Breaking into places. Decoding messages written in invisible ink. I'm not joking. Halfway through the film, Malik starts downing meds because we gotta rope in the addict detective stereotype too.

It's so silly.

Aaron's one thing he does is gloat about leaving his wife for Malik's hot ass and talk about his job. A job that isn't elaborated on at all! Is the man a Chippendales dancer? Does he get up in the morning only to drive into the forest and rub one out for eight hours every day? How the hell are they affording this huge house?

Kayla is the most interesting character. An angsty teen with two father figures. She sees Malik as the fun older brother and Aaron as the real Dad in the relationship. It's a unique twist on the bratty teen stereotype, especially when she is judged for being raised by two men. Occasionally her love for them shines through, and it is real heartwarming. 

However, after the first 20 minutes of runtime, she becomes a restaurant hostess (a job that is actually identified, funny that) and runs off with a local boy toy. Thereafter, she gets hardly any screen time. The director really slammed on those brakes. 

"Abort character development! Revert to a prop!" 

Case in point: one of her few remaining scenes sees Kayla get into a random fight. Malik drives over to pick her up. Malik, instead of being the grown-up and expressing concern, tells her to shut up and listen to his gay trauma dumping. Make it all about yourself, why don't you?

The evil neighbors are utterly nondescript. Who are they? Why do they dress like that? Do they have special powers? What kind of idiotic theater dropout cooked up this bullshit ritual that they are doing? Spiral seems unwilling to cook up any substantial answers to these questions.

"Uh... Creepy Patriarch! Uh... Eternal Youth! Uh... Cults! What more do you need to know!?"

Superficial. Superficial. Superficial. All the way down. Just keep raw dawging that trope's dick.

That's not to take away from the actor's performances. In fact, the acting is solid all around. 

Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman sells Malik as the paranoid male wife perfectly. I never understood why Malik was doing what he was doing, but the emotional turmoil as his life unwinds is expressed beautifully.

Kayla and Aaron were pretty good, and the neighbors were good too. Also we've got Lochlyn Munro! Also known as Greg from Scary Movie! Let's go!

The age difference between Malik and Aaron is stark. We're talking +20 years. The film shoots for the gay young-old relationship dynamic. Which... Okay? Why? Do you think maybe it would make more sense if we knew what Aaron's fucking occupation was? 

I can't, bro. I know I'm harping on it again, but the complete unwillingness to characterize your main couple beyond GAY and DAMAGED. I can't.

But the real sin here is not the homosexuality. It's that this movie is so goddamn preachy about it.

BE YOURSELF. YOUR LOVE IS BEAUTIFUL. 

DON'T YOU KNOW IT'S GREAT TO BE YOURSELF? 

THE MOST BRAVE THING YOU CAN DO IS BE YOURSELF. 

YOU GOT THAT!?

Jeeezus. We really out here huffing the latent farts of im14andthisisdeep.

I'm not joking when I say that these platitudes are in every other scene. It's insane. Hit me over the head with it harder, please. Once or twice I can forgive, but it's so pervasive. 

At one point in my viewing, I convinced myself that it was satire. It had to be.

"Maybe this is social commentary about how the gays are way too self-conscious and paranoid all the time? Constantly worrying about how other people perceive them: Am I too gay? Not gay enough? Does that random guy staring at me from across the street suspect I'm a bottom?"

Then we could have come full circle to the fact that most people in the West genuinely do not give a flying fuck anymore. And the ones that do don't have the balls to do shit.

That would have been a cool subversion of my expectations. But, no. The film isn't clever enough for that, I guess.

Which. Fine. Play it straight if you want. But you need to make the story and characters strong enough to support your naked moralistic theming. And. No. I don't want to hear the "Horror has always been political!" excuses.

"Characters carry theme," as I always say. 

And that's really the core issue I have with Spiral's messaging. It promises a serious intersectional discussion. But the characters and story are far too frail to carry the scale of commentary the film dumps upon the viewer.

Mechanics & Structure

I'm curious as to why the filmmakers set this film in the United States. It really doesn't feel like an American film. It feels exactly like what it is. Canadian.

The filming location. Canadian. All the actors. Canadian. The director. Canadian.

At least you've got an Illinois license plate, right? Well. No. That design didn't appear on Illinois license plates until post-2000. Reminder that Spiral is set in 1995. Don't even get me started with the metric signs. Absolute filth!

We are blessed with strategically placed Stars and Stripes here and there, but, again, I have to ask why the film is set in an American town? Are we trying to say something about how Canada is happy, fun Progressive Land and the U.S. is stuck in the Dark Ages? Are we appealing to the American audiences for more clicks and views?

Thing is, even without combing over the set decor like I did, I think your average American would suss out that this isn't an American film. The weather. The northern accents. The land. They might mistake it for Maine or the Upper Peninsula? Maybe? Idk.

As for Spiral's audio, it ranged from OK to straight-up annoying. Ambience is good. Cranking up the tense trills and blaring sound effects is not, especially when the film is so obvious with its fake jump scares.

Buddy, you're hurting my ears. Example:

Sees random man on bridge.

Local boy toy: Hey, Kayla. Do you see that?

Man starts walking toward them at fucking 1mph.

Kayla: OMG! Let's scram gang! He's probably icky and homeless!

SUPER DRAMATIC MUSIC!

Btw this scene is never explained. Feels like it was part of a different movie. A writing change? Editing error?

We're treated to a couple of translucent superimposition sequences. Hate those. They look so tacky, man. Maybe maybe maybe it harkens back to films made around the time of the setting?

There's some Spiral imagery too. Shots of water spiraling down a drain. The camera spinning away from people in random shots. Weird patterns. It's interesting, but not cohesive. Like the writing, it feels as if it's trying hard to say something. 

Cycles and loops, perhaps? That's so lame. I hope it's not that lol.

I'm realizing I've listed a lot of negatives here, but the film is pretty. The lighting is great. Some angles have that subtle horror movie quirk where it feels like the camera stalks the characters from the shadows.

And. Uh. That's about it.

Final Thoughts

In the intro I mentioned this film felt like it was made for Disney Adults, but after writing all this down, I don't think that's true. Frozen had infinitely more subtlety than this.

This was the first Shudder Original I've seen. Shudder is a titan in the thriller and horror space. They apparently buy the rights to lots of smaller films after festival premieres? If this is quality I can expect from their catalogue, then Lord have mercy.

Every facet of this movie feels like it's trying so hard to say something profound. Yet, it fumbles at every opportunity.

Ironically, what we end up with has no teeth at all. No edge to it. A modestly OK movie that is very safe yet very pretentious. A truly horrific combination.

🟥 Rating: 3/10