The Beach House (2020)

A young couple decide to have a weekend away at his daddy's beach house in a town perched on the edge of the ocean.  Damned if they don't choose the weekend of some terrifying ecological catastrophe for it.

Emily and Randall smooch.  We don't get many essentially nice people smooching in horror films, so let's celebrate them.

I enjoyed the first two acts of this of this film a lot. And they are distinct acts - the initial establishment and location of character, then confusion and mounting horror, followed by an action-orientated climax.

I particularly appreciated the director's willingness to take things slowly and let unease and uncertainty build up. For the first half hour everything seems normal and mundane.  Our characters - Emily and Randall - arrive at the beach house.  They meet an older couple who are also planning on staying there.  Delightfully, and so unusually for films, no-one is unpleasant or acts like a total dick. Misunderstandings smoothed over and before too long everyone is getting high as kites.  Enf of the first act, as mysterious spores driftdown on our chemically enhanced potagonists.

Then, the next morning, strange and unpleasant events disrupt their comedown.  Neither the characters, nor us, know what is going on, or if anything is actually going on at all.  Some icky things get washed up from the ocean but - hey - isn't the ocean FULL of totally gross things that are just better off staying in the ocean, out of sight and out of mind?

Just stay in the fuckin' ocean, you ghastly things from the Mariana Trench.

I'd have liked the whole film to carry on like this, keeping the characters in situ, slowly degenerating as whatever it is the is besetting them overwhelms them.  The film is already Lovecraftian, with echoes of The Colour Out of Space.with more subtle derangement and decay replacing the rapidly escalating threat level in the latter part of the film.  

The third act - kicking off almost precisely on the hour mark - is still good, but more conventional, with the two younger characters (both well played by actors who deserve notice) trying to escape the billowing Death Mist and various grotesque nasties as the threat of the mysterious contamination spreading spurs the authorities into action.  

From there on we are into more traditional horror fare as Emily and Randall struggle against impending doom.  And while it isn't original it is very, very well done.  Because we care about the characters, we are invested in their desperate attempt to escape.  And director Jeffrey Brown pulls out the stops, happily drenching everything in reds and oranges and blues, and everything is flashing and Death Mist is billowing everywhere and it is absolutely bloody fantastic.  I love this stuff.

I do not care what you think.  I would happily marry this lighting and make babies with it.

As for whatever it is that is besetting them - it comes from the ocean, and it is gross and slimy.  I am not squeamish, but I am not a big fan of icky effects - they interrupted the unsettling creepiness, giving us something concrete to focus on - and, with body horror special effects, there's always an element of 'how real does this look?' which snaps you out of the story.  Here they are pretty good, but it still serves as a distraction from the sense of dread and anticipation.

Emily performs some field surgery on her foot

The film's biggest flaw, though, is that it can't live up to its potential to be completely as awesome as it deserves.  An unusual complaint.  But I wish it had been bigger.  I was fascinated by the backdrop to the film - this decrepit backwater little town which seems to be almost entirely uninhabited, the listless but not antagonistic characters, all reminded me of the glorious Messiah of Evil.  A superbly crafted, short horror film, it needed to sprawl more.  I wish the film makers had had the scope to fill in more detail of the environment and delineate more characters, letting events build even more slowly over the course of several days, and expanding the horror of the final act.

Star Rating: ***