3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Arcadian

2024, Benjamin Brewer (feature debut) -- download

The term Arcadian refers to living a life at one with nature, harkening back ancient times, a place in the mountains of Greece where Pan was said to dwell. The word is often used in the same language as a utopia. The world of this movie may have "returned to nature" but its far from being at one with it. This is the classic (really? classic? maybe just .... familiar?) monster movie, popular since A Quiet Place (original movie post not available; this links to the sequel) where a monster has arisen and all but wiped out humanity. Note to self, see if anyone has collected all the different properties that have explored this idea, probably starting with a vampire reference. The people of these movies may have learned to live off the land again, but rarely are they "at one". And "nature" is still trying to kill their ass.

The movie starts as Paul (Nicolas Cage, The Rock) is escaping The City, with imagery reminiscent of The Last of Us (I guess the writeup of this got lost in the recent period of "not writing about TV" ?) into the countryside where he finds two abandoned babies, assumingly twins. This is most definitely not the countryside of the US but no matter, we can ignore that. Ireland does lend itself to pastoral depictions more readily than the US.

15 years later.

Rituals. Do you chores, do your things, always be back by dusk so the doors can be locked, the doors can be barred, the windows sealed up and everything checked twice. Cuz at night the monsters come to scratch and bang and growl and hiss.

Joseph (Jaeden Martell, It) is smart, clever and insular. He draws, he makes things. Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins, Lost in Space) is outgoing (he actually cuts his hair), and more interested in running through the woods and over the hill to the Rose Farm, a small collective family who has a teenage girl. 

We spend a good amount of time getting to know the dynamic between the boys, the frictions and seeing how Paul has raised them. This is low-key Cage, little of the familiar mania running through the character. So much so that I might say that he is more the secondary character here. And for much of the movie he is out of play. 

Thomas is returning late from the Rose Farm, where he kissed a girl (and he liked it), when he slips and falls into a crevasse. When he wakes, it is after dark. Paul has gone out to find him and they end up fighting off a bunch of the monsters, claws and long arms digging up through the soft soil at the bottom of the crevasse until Paul triggers an explosive. It drives the monsters off but he is sorely injured. What to do now? Only one choice -- take Paul to the Rose Farm.

Exceeept, they are rejected. They will provide no shelter, no medicine, but they will take Thomas in, as one less mouth for Joseph to feed will help his father recover (how? no idea, its Rose Logic). The problem is that Joseph has noticed the monsters have been changing tactics, and they have learned to finally come up from below. Apparently none of these houses have classic North American concrete foundations. First, we see the attack on the Rose Farm, then when only Thomas and Charlotte (Sadie Soverall, Saltburn) survive the attack, they rush back to his brother, to find him securing the place against the monsters, who have already dug their tunnels from below. Paul wakes up, the monsters attack, and Paul sacrifices himself so the others can escape, blowing the house up behind them.

This definitely was a lower budget version of those other movies teetering on the bottom teer. But it has vision, in that the story is more about the two brothers coming of age in a world where adulthood is not guaranteed. The monsters are trappings, metaphors, as they often are in these movies. But woo-boy, did they have fun with the monster creation. Long limbed, folding up on themselves, able to stretch them out beyond comprehension, even extending claws like an octopus extends its arms (arms, not tentacles) but their heads are like ... cartoons? The head is wide and flat, filled with... well, not-sharp-teeth, but flat molars, and one of their mechanisms is to clap those teeth like one of those wind-up denture toys, deafeningly loud. And how they eat? We only get a brief vision of one expelling inner organs out and onto a victim, so I am assuming they digest whole bodies. And then there is the (not almost) laughingly weird mechanic where all the creatures gather all together in a ... wheel... and roll along quickly, chasing down fleeing prey. I am sure they were going for the "like something nobody has seen before" and while it is weird & funny, it is that indeed.

I usually watch horror movies in October, and only a few squeak through into the rest of the year. But this year is a bumper crop of horror movies, I am assuming there were a ton sitting on shelves ready to be unleashed after the strike. I watched this primarily for a PoAp depiction and while that was far removed, the movie more focused on human dynamic, it was a generally satisfying movie. It makes me wonder if the same can be applied to the action thrillers I watch as much as PoAp movies, and no, those movies are often less-than-satisfying even within the confines of their genres.

It is at this point he realizes this is the latest evolution of how this blog covers less and less the movies themselves and more and more the act of watching, the why's and how's. That's something, I guess.