7/28/2023 0 Comments Spiral horror![]() Spiral is set in 1995 on the road to the following year’s presidential election, and it’s a backdrop that’s used for reasons beyond the nostalgic charm of being able to play with Polaroid cameras, VHS tapes and clunky, archaic computers. ![]() “You need to forget everything that I said about loud and proud do not draw attention to yourself. “In this town and in this country, it is not safe for people that stand out,” Malik finally breaks down and tells Kayla later in the movie, his devastating character arc being realized in the precise way we hoped it wouldn’t. Bowyer-Chapman delivers a heartbreaking performance as Malik, a man who so badly wants to believe the “live loud and proud” mantra he bestows upon his daughter deep down, however, he knows just how dangerous that can be in a world that’s all-too-quick to demonize anyone who doesn’t fit a particular mold. While the film begins in the same way countless horror movies do – young family moves into a new house, unaware that their happy lives are about to take a detour into nightmare territory – it’s immediately unique in its perspective, putting all viewers into the mindset of a gay man who’s painfully aware that he’s not safe simply because of his sexual orientation. There’s a creeping dread that hangs over the entirety of Spiral, and what’s so terrifying about the film is that its horrors are sadly so very real. He sees the stares and he knows what’s coming, and it often falls solely on Malik’s shoulders to deal with the brunt of it. Aaron, at one point referred to as an “Uncle Tom for gay people” by Malik, has trouble even believing that his kind new neighbors could possibly be homophobes, while Malik’s experience in the neighborhood is quite different. Black man Malik, quite unlike white boyfriend Aaron, has gotten a taste of just how dangerous it can be to simply exist in America, and it creates an interesting dynamic between the duo when hateful terrors start rearing their ugly head once more. ![]() It’s only a brief glimpse at a past trauma that’s further explored throughout the film, but it’s a horror that haunts every frame beyond it. Spiral kicks off with a brief flashback sequence wherein a young Malik and his boyfriend are attacked while on a date at the drive-in, violently assaulted by homophobic men wielding baseball bats. And as Malik digs deeper into the homophobic reactions to his family’s presence, he finds himself trapped in a decades-spanning nightmare that he may not be able to get his family out of. ![]() But just underneath the surface of the friendly suburban smiles lies a dark, twisted secret. Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman and Ari Cohen star as Malik and Aaron, a gay couple who move into a new neighborhood in search of a better life for themselves and their teenage daughter, Jennifer Laporte‘s Kayla. The latest movie that no doubt has some Get Out influence to it is Kurtis David Harder‘s 1995-set Spiral, written by Colin Minihan and John Poliquin. Rather, it would seem that Get Out has kicked open the doors and busted open the floodgates for fresh perspectives, experiences and representation in the horror genre, paving the way for new types of “social horror” movies that unfortunately just wouldn’t have ever been made without one big success story leading the way first. While classics like Night of the Living Dead and John Carpenter’s Halloween spawned countless imitators, the films that have come in the wake of Get Out – and its box office and Academy Awards success – thus far haven’t been direct imitators at all. On top of this, the exponentially-increasing extremity of the series' signature traps was toned down significantly.Jordan Peele’s Get Out has proven itself to be an influential horror movie in a bit of a different way than influential horror movies of the past. While the first seven films were directly connected to each other, the subsequent spinoff and ninth entry, Spiral, took a different approach to the series continuity, gradually distancing itself from the involvement of Tobin Bell's "Jigsaw" while leaning more into police investigations and mystery elements. The franchise was a smash hit, spawning annual installments from 2004 to 2010 and raking in more than one billion dollars of box-office revenue across all films combined. Originally created by James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the franchise focuses on the antics of "The Jigsaw Killer," a malicious murderer who forces his victims into sadistic "games" that they either win or lose by living or dying, respectively. A one-off thriller turned into a gore-filled soap opera, the Saw franchise has been going strong for nine films now, with not one but two separate soft reboots in four years.
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