Review: Shudder’s ‘Spiral’ is an Extremely Effective LGBTQ Psychological Horror

September 20, 2020

Shudder is killing it (no pun intended) with the slow-burn horror films this year, as films like Impetigore, The Beach House, and La Llorona have created some big waves. They keep the ball rolling with Spiral, an LGBTQ-themed psychological horror film that dropped on September 17th.

Spiral features Malik and Aaron, a same-sex couple that move to the suburbs from the city with their 17-year-old daughter Kayla. Although the move to a small town initially was to improve their quality of acceptance and life, they soon find out that their neighbors may not be as kind as they seem. Struggling with the blend of trauma from his past and medication side effects, Malik starts to question whether sinister acts are figments of his paranoia, or moments of his reality.

First off, it’s wonderful to see LGBTQ representation in horror films. There simply just isn’t enough. Historically, a massive piece of the horror community has been made up of LGBTQ horror fans, and they deserve just as much representation in the genre that they support as anyone else. Kudos to director Kurtis David Harder for breaking the mold and creating a queer-themed horror film. Hopefully this trend of continuing to represent minorities in horror films keeps flourishing.

The acting from Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman – American Horror Story, RuPaul’s Drag Race) and Aaron (Ari Cohen – It 2018, Maps to the Stars) is excellent all-around. The chemistry between the two is believable and sets the tone for the film. The audience feels the closeness of their relationship, whether they’re being loving or dissonant. I love the amount of development that went into Malik’s character, but the character writing still had me asking for more. Even more can be said for Aaron, whose character didn’t share as much screen-time or history with us. These two are joined by horror alumni Lochlyn Munro (Freddy vs. Jason, Dracula 2000) and Chandra West (White Noise, Night Terrors) as the nosy and intentionally cringy neighbors that “accept” the same-sex couple into their neighborhood. Strangely enough, this weird collection of actors makes it work throughout the entire film.

The camera work, lighting, score, and pretty much all other technical aspects of the film were excellent. They all highlighted the creepiness and intensity of the film, much like Jordan Peele’s Get Out, which this film seems to draw a lot of similarities to. The film did a great job of using the effect of an action to scare the audience, rather than the action itself. To me, personally, this kind of scare factor makes things feel more realistic. Moments like these in Spiral immediately brought Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man to mind, which I loved. For example, when Malik comes home, he finds a slur spray-painted on his living room wall. We didn’t need to see the perpetrator commit the action for us all to feel uneasy that someone had broken into their home and could still be there, even now.

I thought the dialogue writing was extremely strong. There was a specific scene where a character is telling Malik that times have changed from his traumatic experience in the 80’s to the year when this film takes place in 1995. Malik responds with “The world is exactly the same place as it was back then, people don’t change, they just get better at hiding how they feel.” This has both a heartbreaking and sobering reality to it, that even days later, that message sticks in my brain. That is excellent dialogue writing and delivery, my friends.

If there’s one thing I’d ding the movie for, it’s the story writing. The script left a lot of questions unanswered and seemed to plummet a bit when switching from a realistic feel to peppering some unneeded supernatural elements. I felt like those moments unnecessarily hurt the legitimacy and relevancy of the film’s messaging, although I don’t think that was the intent. Unfortunately, the story-writing aspect of a film is a huge piece.

As with most slow burns, the ending gives us the big reveal and the satisfying (or bummer) moments we’ve been building up over the entire film. Spiral delivered on this and presented us with a little peek into the future of what’s to come. Overall, Shudder has produced another extremely effective psychological horror film to their platform, and they continue to crush it in 2020.