The Block Island Sound: Still Waters Run Deep

Sometimes it’s hard to think of horror films like other films. Genre filmmaking in general skews toward cliché, toward hitting anticipated (if not outright demanded) beats, neglecting things outside of the expectations of the genre. I don’t think subtext is an intentional product, I think it’s emergent from choices made by people making the film, whether they’re aware of where those choices are coming from or not. Like, if a choice makes a particular scene scary, why does it make it scary? What assumptions lead to “this is scary?” That’s where things like time, place, and culture come in. That way, even some of the hackiest genre filmmaking can still tell us something about the conditions that produced it. But sometimes it’s just so pro forma, so mechanical, that no sense of the impulses that drove it escape. I feel like it’s been awhile since I saw a film with interesting subtext, is what I’m saying.

Which brings me to The Block Island Sound. I don’t know that I’d call it especially scary. It’s low-key, certainly unsettling, with a real air of tragedy to it. And a lot of this tragedy comes from the ways it depicts the costs of masculinity.

It’s the story of Tom Lynch, and his son Harry. They live on Block Island, just off the coast of Rhode Island. Tom’s a fisherman, his wife died some time ago, and his two daughters got off the island as soon as they could. Tom probably drinks a little too much, and as the film opens, Harry’s starting to wonder about his dad, no matter how many time he gruffly insists that he’s “fine.” Tom’s becoming forgetful, he’s losing time, blacking out. He wakes up on the boat in the middle of open water, everything in disarray, no idea how he got there.

When nobody else is around, he hears a deep, monolithic growling.

This ends badly for Tom, and the majority of the movie is the story of how Harry and his sister Audry - back on the island doing some work with the EPA - deal (or don’t) with Tom’s death and what seems to be Harry beginning a similar decline. There’s a lot of weird stuff happening on the island, unusual amounts of dead fish washing up on the beach, birds dropping dead right out of the sky, electrical interference. And Harry’s starting to hear something growling out in the dark. But for the majority of the film, this is all sort of going on in the background, with Harry’s gradual disintegration (and denial) making it harder and harder for him to lead a normal life and adding strain to a relationship with his siblings that already wasn’t great. It’s as much a family drama as anything else. And in a lot of ways, that’s a good thing - I think scary movies are often better when they take the time to make their characters feel real and human. Maybe sympathetic, maybe not, but like you’re watching actual people, so when things start getting dark, there are real emotional stakes.

But in this case, I think the tradeoff is that the film never really kicks into high gear. It’s more sort of a steady climb - it moves forward, but does so in understated fashion, and I think as a result important narrative moments, important beats where things should feel like they’re escalating, don’t really land with the power they should. The more powerful moments, really, aren’t the supernatural ones, they’re the natural ones. The characters in this film are people, drawn at human scale - even the really annoying conspiracy nut who opens the movie somewhat inauspiciously (though to its credit, his little introductory rant doesn’t really explain what’s actually happening like I thought it would - he’s just as wrong as everyone else), three siblings who don’t get along (and don’t get along in a way that’s believable), small-town folks with their petty jealousies, and well-meaning outsiders who don’t quite get it, This all sets the stage for something more powerfully sad than scary. Tom and Harry as perfect examples of a certain kind of man - stoic, self-sufficient, not at all willing to ask for help or even admit that they need help. And this is ultimately the tragic heart of the story - the Lynch family are basically decent people with their problems, just like everyone else, surrounded by people who are in their turn flawed in one way or another, who in one way or another let them down. All of what follows could have been avoided if Tom had just spoken up, hadn’t refused to admit something was wrong, and lives are lost because of it/

When the supernatural does kick in, it’s mostly at that same measured, understated pace. The film does a lot of its work in hallucinations and dream sequences that are well-done, and don’t really overexplain or go too big and loud, but like the film as a whole, staying at a simmer throughout means it never really comes to a boil.  It’s not totally static, but even though there’s movement, it’s sort of the same stuff over and over again, only getting a little worse each time, so this contributes to the sort of flat feeling of the rest of the film. Hackles never really get raised, and the ultimate payoff is more cerebral than visceral. It’s well-done, recontextualizing some dialogue from earlier in the movie in a way that brings the point home and it ends on a nicely inconclusive note which gives it sort of a lingering chill. But it’s like the film’s setting. It’s the flat, bright expanse of open water in daytime, churning seas at night, the overcast roads of a small island town in the off-season, night held back only by the lights of homes - gray, quiet, and enigmatic. Ultimately, the sea keeps its secrets.

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