Wednesday, February 6, 2019

The Corridor (2010)

The Corridor (2010): written by Josh MacDonald; directed by Evan Kelly; starring Stephen Chambers (Ty), James Gilbert (Everett), David Patrick Flemming (Chris), Matthew Amyotte (Bobcat), Mary-Colin Chisholm (Pauline), and Glen Matthews (Huggs): 

Very good, low-budget Canadian indie that travels through some of the territory of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" before it and Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation after it, arriving at its own destination.

Five high-school friends still live in their Nova Scotia town 15 years later. A personal tragedy brings them together for a wake to be held over the weekend at one of their remote cottages. One friend struggles with mental illness and the varying degrees of acceptance the others have for his condition. So clearly his hallucinations simply stem from his mental condition, right?

Ha! The Corridor preserves enough mystery about what is happening that the explanations offered towards the end of the movie are criticized by people inside the movie. There's something out there in the woods. And there's something messing with everyone's heads. And in a nice twist, the troubled friend is also the one best-equipped to face the mystery head-on -- to keep his head, as Kipling said, while everyone around him is losing theirs.

The acting by the five principals is never less than convincing, the direction solid and unshowy, and the few visual effects about as good as one can expect from such a low-budget affair. Nigel Bennett, one of those Canadian actors who has appeared in everything, strolls through in an atypical role as a hunter. In all, an effective and affecting film of horrors cosmic and human that actually left me feeling a bit haunted at the end. Recommended.

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