Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins, Sadie Soverall, Samantha Coughlan, Joe Dixon, Joel Gillman, Daire McMahon.
Like the instant smash hit, A Quiet Place, some films just unexpectedly come along, grab the viewer by soul, and takes them on a ride of horror driven by a unique monster so appealing that you cannot but help wonder just what the back story to their appearance on Earth actually is.
Michael Nilon’s screenplay for the Benjamin Brewer directed Arcadian may seem on the surface as the simple premise for yet another insert into the genre’s ever multiplying list of inexplicable creatures that have taken it upon themselves to ravage humanity, to destroy every last person on the planet; and yet it is not so simple as that, and indeed as with the aforementioned A Quiet Place, there is so much going on under the surface, quiet literally in this case. That Arcadian is a demonstration of less is more and is a film in many ways of stature and elemental surprise.
Whilst the creature is one of wonderful disgust and frightening exposition, it is in the relationship between the remaining vestiges of society, the sporadic nomad like existence and the distrust that simmers between other survivors and the nightly terror that exists as the sun goes down.
To have creatures that are photophobic is a nice touch in a horror film, another illusion to a state of mind that the vast majority of humans cannot fathom, and whilst serving as another reason for the similarities between this and the John Krasinski inspired series of films, it holds out that whatever brought these beings into existence, the illusion of the premise of a pandemic at the start, and even to the Morlocks in the tremendous The Time Machine is enough to have the viewer salivating at the prospect of a prequel, and even a franchise, waiting in the wings.
A film that explores the dynamic of mistrust in a community in a time when the odds are against you surviving on your own are wafer thin, Arcadian is a decently told story that was unexpected and dramatic; an addition to a group of films that showcases a disability within an alienlike creature as not being a hindrance to the savagery they wreak.
Ian D. Hall