The Corridor is a horror movie about a group of friends who return to their childhood retreat to support their mentally disabled friend as he spreads his mother’s ashes, but is it a mistake to return to a place that may have had mostly great memories, but ended on a horrific note? It is a Canadian horror film.
The Corridor is not undiluted greatness, but cannot be easily dismissed as a bad and/or dumb horror film. It seemed inspired by Dreamcatcher, but with potentially a better story. While I never got completely enraptured by it and swept into the madness of the story like Color Out of Space or Mandy because the visuals are not as arresting as the story, I thought that it was essentially brilliant at its core and perhaps with more experience and funding, this movie could have been a masterpiece. Without hesitation, I can even state that the mistakes even seemed thoughtful and intelligent.
The Corridor’s story is brilliant in the way that it addresses mental illness and shows how it can affect anyone using a sci fi catalyst. Most fictional movies impulse is to reveal that a character was never crazy, should discard their prescription medicine and embrace greatness, but this film’s trajectory is the opposite without diminishing the humanity, the predicament and the relatability of the situation. A viewer could still put his or herself in any character’s shoes regardless of what they are doing and empathize with them, and the movie deliberately shifts focus to keep us off balance between trusting and being wary of characters. The horror of the situation is that these are normal people placed in an impossible situation that fundamentally threatens their lives and relationships. The relationships are far from perfect, but they have weathered so much because of the basic sensitivity that these male characters have for each other even as they engage in initially ordinary, quotidian male shenanigans that range from childish to toxic, but nothing monstrous. The real tragedy is how this phenomenon further strains what they have succeeded in rebuilding. They are better people than me.
Even though the actors in The Corridor are not well known, they do an excellent job engendering sympathy for their characters even as they begin to be affected by the phenomenon. They have to play their characters on multiple levels during different periods in their life and it works even if the makeup and hair do not. Usually there is a point when a viewer writes off a character once he becomes too affected and starts becoming a destructive force, but from the beginning, the values of this film are the opposite. It is about stopping the harm even at the expense of one’s own safety, and the actors manage to convey it individually and as an ensemble. It is completely believable to consider them as a solid group of long-term friends with routines and patterns that get warped. Better known actors have failed.
I appreciated how The Corridor’s instinct was to not wreak havoc initially and took its time before letting all hell break loose. Unfortunately I was not engaged in watching the guys’ routine. I am going to plead my gender normative tastes and racial identity as excuses for not digging snowmobiling montages. It just is not for me, but if it is your thing, you will have a ball. So I am going to blame me for not liking the slow build up as I normally would if it was a John Carpenter film. I am not entirely sure that it was a good idea to introduce a character that was not in the introductory scene. I am not saying that I did not like the character, or that he did not serve an important function, but I was briefly confused how he fit into the group. There needed to be a moment in the introductory scene where he was either visually or verbally referenced so that when he appears, I can immediately recognize that he was the person who was missing in the beginning. I even briefly rewound the movie to rewatch the first scene to make sure that I was not misunderstanding what was unfolding.
The weakest element of The Corridor was the special effects, hair and make up. One guy has to wear a skull cap that just looks ridiculous. Some of the special effects with the titular phenomenon completely looked cheap, but they did the best that they could do with what they had. Still it took me out of the movie at the denouement when I could not figure out where one character went who was being rapidly moved and another character was chasing him. It was inadvertent chaos cinema and made the fate of the characters briefly unintelligible. The filmmakers did their best to focus on their strengths because the more intimate horror scenes were perfectly paced and executed. They struck the right balance between allowing the viewer’s imagination to run wild to knowing what they could pull off and show us so the film morphs into some deeply disturbing spirit of Clive Barker, Lovecraftian tones that comes as a real unexpected shock considering that it is a sci fi setup that packs a horror punch. The use of the VHS tapes is so creepy, and the use of sound makes up for the weakness of the visuals. I have no idea why when people make that shape with their mouth, it is the most mind shattering moment ever, but it gives me The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Donald Sutherland edition, chills. I do not think that will ever get tired of that physical gimmick to signify otherness.
The Corridor feels like a tragedy with its simple, elegant pathos. I love a bleak film, and it ranks fairly high on the bittersweet meter, especially when the film looks back and confronts the opening scene. The filmmakers deserve credit for some strong ideas and delivering an ambitious film even if it did not always capture my attention. I am deeply saddened that it appears that the director, Evan Kelly, has not subsequently done any feature films. The writer, Josh MacDonald, is still working, but predominantly in television, not cinema, and I was not particularly interested in the other feature film that he wrote though it has some notable character actors in the cast. Shout out to Nigel Bennett from Forever Knight who makes a brief appearance.
While I cannot wholeheartedly recommend The Corridor, if you do not mind seeing an imperfect film and enjoy watching regular guys doing quotidian things before graphic Lovecraftian hijinks ensue, I would recommend this horror sci-fi film. It has a good and sensitive heart at its core and tackles some thorny issues brilliantly, including loss of potential through age, while never losing sight of the fact that its audience did not come to watch a Lifetime movie for men. The horror reflects the desperation of human beings to hurl themselves from what they experience as a flawed present into a fictional, imagined glory-filled future that does not exist in order to resurrect a past feeling that leads only to the reality of death just as those moments are gone thus actually obliterating a present more beautiful and perfect that they realize until it is too late.