October Horror Challenge 2022 #49: "Spiral (2019)"

I first discovered this movie when I was searching for the OTHER horror movie named Spiral that came out recently, the one connected to the Saw series, and when I saw that it featured a same-sex couple who are raising a kid, I wanted to see it even more, so it went on my "must watch" list, where it sat for a few years until I got Shudder and saw that they had it. today, on National Coming Out Day 2022, I'm finally giving it a watch, so let's see what I think of this one.

This movie follows Malik and Aaron, a same-sex couple raising a teenage daughter named Kayla. The family moves to a small town with beautiful views and seemingly very friendly neighbors, but soon they begin to suspect that their neighbors are far from friendly and harboring some terrible secrets.

This is one of those movies with a somewhat unreliable narrator. Most of the story us told from Malik's perspective, and even he admits his brain is a bit foggy and he's not sure what's going on a lot of the time. He's harboring some feelings from some mysterious events that happened to him in the past, and we the audience don't exactly know what they are, so when things start to get strange Aaron thinks Malik's past is skewing his vision and that nothing is really going on. Someone sends Aaron some incriminating evidence that paints Malik in a bad light and Aaron is only too quick to believe the worst.

Then things get even fuzzier as Malik seems to spiral even more out of control and even less makes sense from his perspective. he says something about people possibly messing with his meds, which would make his erratic behavior make a bit more sense, but we're never sure if what he's seeing is true or what's really going on. Even the big reveal, though it's creepy, does not totally make sense. I was left with a ton of questions, so it definitely could have been handled better, but kudos to the filmmakers for trying something new and creating a worthy entry in the "creepy neighbors in a small town" sub-subgenre. This movie is definitely worth checking out, just don't expect everything to be explained to you.