You do not want your parents to succumb to the indignity of senescence. To lose their personalities to dementia, and the vagaries of aging. You also don’t want them to lose their mind to the influence of alien entities that control their bodies. The Block Island Sound is about both equally legitimate worries.
Buy The Block Island Sound 4K UHDHarry lives with his dad, Tom, on Block Island. Tom is getting old, and his behavior is worrying. He sleepwalks, he goes out on his boat in blackouts. It’s not good… but Harry doesn’t tell anybody about it. Because Harry wants to take care of his dad and be seen taking care of his dad. It’s hard when a parent begins to falter, and the children need to take charge.
And Harry’s the only one who’s there. Audry is a single mother who lives on the mainland. She does not want to go to the island, even though as an EPA investigator, she has a case there. Dead fish have been appearing on the shore by the ton. Something weird is happening on that island.
The Block Island Sound is equally a family drama and a weird cosmic horror movie. Family drama is about the divisions and disappointments that exist in a family dynamic. Cosmic horror is about the characters discovering their insignificance in the face of the great powers that exist in the universe.
This film bridges the gap surprisingly deftly. Harry’s dad gets lost at sea, and eventually shows up on shore, dead. Harry doesn’t believe it was an accident… but that subplot gets lost in his increasingly real visions of his dead Dad telling him to do things. To bring things to the spot in the ocean where he had disappeared.
To Harry’s sister, this looks like a psychotic break. In one of my favorite twists in the movie, a doctor tells Harry’s sister about a patient of hers who had electromagnetic hypersensitivity, which she thinks Harry is suffering from. The sister goes on a journey to meet the man, and he says straight out, no, I don’t have that nonsense. I was being contacted by aliens.
Maybe I’ve gone too far into the story. The point is the atmosphere, and how it is a complete slow burn from a family drama to a horror scenario. It’s a tricky thing to do in a film, and I’d give The Block Island Sound… a B. 80%. It nails the transition pretty well and has a decent climax.
It’s a very low-budget horror movie, and has its effectiveness connected to atmosphere rather than anything visually spectacular. There is an interesting special effects finale, but there’s no tentacle monsters or risen forbidden cities. That’s the kind of stuff l like. That’s my prejudice.
The Block Island Sound is more subtle and atmospheric than that. I found it thoroughly enjoyable, even with the deliberate pace and slow burn. It’s a low-budget movie and surprisingly effective. There’s a monologue at the end, repeated from earlier in the film, which gives the actions of the film a fresh resonance. I do wish it ended with fish monsters ravishing the island population, but that’s the movie in my head, not the movie the filmmakers made. What it is combines the horror of a universe working against you and your family doing the same. The Block Island Sound evokes an effective atmosphere. It accomplishes the film’s goals. It’s good. I wish it had pushed further.
The Block Island Sound has been released on 4K UHD by Synapse Films. Audio extras include a commentary by the directors Kevin and Matthew McManus. Video extras include “A Practical Apocalypse” (4 min), a featurette about how the directors got all that footage of dead fish; “Finding the Cast” (10 min), a featurette about casting the film; “Filming on the Water” (7 min), a featurette on the challenges of filming on the water; “Special Effects on a Shoestring” (8 min), about low-budget special-effects work; “Los Angeles Behind-the-Scenes (Super 8mm)” (2 min), silent super 8mm behind-the-scene footage; “McManus Family Home Movies” (6 min), a featurette about the McManus family working together, including movies they made when they were kids.
