Things aren’t exactly salad and cream (that’s a thing that’s good, right?) for Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) and his partner Aaron (Ari Cohen) who move to the ultra-suburbs with A-dawgs teenage daughter Kayla (Jennifer Laporte).
Being the 1990’s and all, the townsfolk are not exactly hip to the same-sex couple bag, though they hide it well… but not well enough to keep Malik from slip sliding away into paranoid delusions… or are they? Yeah, this one is a bit of the ol’ mind fuck cats n’ creeps!
Director Kurtis David Harder and screenwriters Colin Minihan and John Poliquin have created one hell of a potent combo of social commentary and full-on horror biz.
Firstly, our protagonists are so likable that we just know things are going to go tits up for them in the worst possible way, and boy howdy do they fucking ever! Cohen and Chapman make for a believable couple, and no matter how much we want hings to go swimmingly for these dudes, it doesn’t and the aforementioned (and eponymous) spiral into complete insanity that Chapman is tasked to deliver is a damn solid slice of arcane actin’ believe you me cats n’ creeps!
That sitch causes much static for Laporte’s character as well, as one of her dad’s goes from touting being yourself and being damn proud of it, to telling her to shy away from notice as his sinister state worsens, and it’s a convincingly disturbing dichotomy for sure!
Now all isn’t mental breakdowns and messages, as there is a supernatural element at play here as well, and that’s good news for us horror hounds that’s for sure, and the mounting tension is handled expertly by the filmmakers assembled here.
Bottom line: Spiral is a hell of a journey into fear, and shouldn’t be missed!
Catch Spiral on Shudder now!
