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Drownsman, The
Starz / Anchor Bay // Unrated // May 12, 2015
List Price: $26.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
While so many other indie filmmakers look back to the '80s with a smirk, churning out one deliriously over-the-top action/horror flick after another, The Drownsman is reverent. From poster art that'd look right at home on an oversized Wizard Video VHS clamshell to an undead killer ripped straight out of Wes Craven's playbook, The Drownsman is the right kind of throwback...for a while, anyway.
Madison (Michelle Mylett) suffers from a fear of water so paralyzing that she barely functions as a living, breathing person. She curls up in the fetal position at the sight of the stuff, to the point that she has to take fluids intravenously. Madison abandons her duties as maid of honor on her best friend's wedding day, unable to claw her way out of bed because of the torrential downpour outside. Her closest friends can no longer stomach to see Madison like this. She's been an unrecognizably different person since the tumble she took on the docks a year earlier transformed her, tormented by visions of some waterlogged psychopath in every puddle, every bathtub, and every time someone leaves the tap running. This intervention is a last ditch effort. Either Maddy makes some serious in-roads tonight into overcoming her hydrophobia, or she'll be on her own for good. Hell, they even bring in a medium (Clare Bastable) to indulge her. The intervention doesn't take, though. Before, The Drownsman was only fixated on Madison, and his appearances were limited to disturbing visions. The séance has unshackled him, empowering him to reach through any form of water to drag Madison's friends to his dark, dank lair where they're systematically drowned. Madison feverishly tries to uncover as much about The Drownsman as she can, dead certain that something in his past may hold the secret to putting him down for good. All she has to do is survive long enough to figure out what that is...
Director/co-writer/producer Chad Archibald and I clearly grew up watching a lot of the same movies. As many '80s throwbacks as we've all seen over the past few years, The Drownsman is inspired far more by Wes Craven's supernatural killers than the more straightahead Friday the 13th-style slashers of late. Freddy Krueger could slaughter his prey in their dreams. Horace Pinker hunted his victims through power lines and telephone wires. The Drownsman, meanwhile, can attack through a medium even more inescapable. You can take yourself off the grid or dope yourself up with Hypnocil, but avoiding water in all of its forms...? Even if you somehow manage something that impossible, you'll be dead from dehydration in days. The Drownsman conjures up some really inventive kills to pair with its slasher's supernatural powers, keeping me perched on the edge of my seat even with something as routine as a girl reaching towards a noisy washing machine.
The Drownsman suffers from a couple of miscalculations, though. I respect that Chad Archibald keeps the narrative so clean and uncluttered, but it comes at a cost. None of Madison's friends have particularly distinct personalities. There aren't any splashes of color to flesh them out as people; they're defined purely by their devotion to Madison and as impending victims of the Drownsman. No snappy dialogue, no memorable traits or habits, and seemingly no life outside of being Maddy's friend or another waterlogged corpse. I mean, the newly-married Hannah (Caroline Palmer) ignores her husband on their wedding night to berate Madison, stages the intervention the day after the wedding, and never goes on a honeymoon or so much as casually mentions the guy again. Anyway, their deaths have precisely as much impact as the hydrocentric kills that Archibald and company dream up, and the best of them are out of the way halfway through the movie. There's not much to sustain interest in the back half when a significant reveal is telegraphed so far in advance, when there's no real emotional attachment to any of the remaining red shirts, and when the kills start to feel like obligations to pad the screenplay out to feature-length. The Drownsman follows the template set by A Nightmare on Elm St. to a fault. Rather than isolate its characters, spread out the fairly thin story over however many days, and overindulge its ineffective investigative angle, I can't help but think that The Drownsman might've been more unnerving and intense if the bulk of it had unspooled over the course of one hellish night instead. The water angle opens itself up to so many possibilities that I'm baffled by the need to flood an elevator to put a few of the straggling survivors in harm's way. There's suspending disbelief, and then there's that. I can buy how clean-scrubbed Madison is after a year without showers or baths more readily than that offputtingly ridiculous sequence.
It's doubly frustrating because The Drownsman gets so much right. The visuals are ambitious and stylish as hell. I have no idea what the movie's budget was, but the end result looks many times more expensive than I'm sure it cost to produce. I appreciate the emphasis on practical effects over CGI, which is appropriate given its '80s supernatural slasher leanings. The Drownsman strikes a very strong balance about how much to show of its titular killer. He's neither overexposed nor shown in jittery, quarter-second flashes either, and his presence is felt even when he's not on-screen, eking menace out of a sight as ordinary as a bottle of water. Michelle Mylett is phenomenal as the quite literally haunted Madison, bringing to the role both the vulnerability and the resolve that define horror's most memorable scream queens. I'm intrigued that, the Drownsman and a grieving father aside, all the key roles are played by women. There are understated glimmers of humor too.
I wish I were writing a rave review right now, and with what The Drownsman teases towards, I'm sure there'll be no shortage of wildly enthusiastic writeups of Chad Archibald's further genre efforts very soon. The Drownsman just isn't it. Flawed but enjoyable, The Drownsman is still very much worth a rental, though. Rent It.
Video
Shot with the mighty RED Epic, the definition and detail on display throughout The Drownsman can be staggering: clarity so astonishing that I feel as if I can discern each individual hair on the actresses' heads...every fiber in their clothes. Marc Forand's cinematography is outstanding as well. The Drownsman is teeming with inventive, masterfully composed shots that I'd frame and hang on my wall if I could get away with it, and I found myself continually impressed by the deft interplay between light and shadow. One early sequence has bright, candy-colored Christmas lights strung around everywhere, and that lulled me into a false sense of security. Those are the only vividly saturated colors throughout the entirety of The Drownsman, which otherwise settles on one color for a sequence and drenches every square inch of the screen in it. The movie alternates between a decent number of colors -- it's not as dominated by dingy browns and yellows as the screenshots scattered around this review might suggest -- but I'm still a little disappointed by how monochromatic so many of its sequences are. That's obviously a very deliberate visual choice on the filmmakers' part, and I'm probably the only writer out there grousing and groaning about it. Otherwise, though, I can't find much of anything to complain about. The AVC encode never shows any sign of strain, and the image isn't marred by any noise reduction of note or edge enhancement. There are some shots that look thinner and flatter than I'd expect, and video noise spikes in a handful of shots near the end, but none of that is at all a constant distraction. The Drownsman is a spectacular looking production that demands to be experienced on Blu-ray.
The Drownsman arrives on a BD-25 disc at its theatrical aspect ratio of 2.39:1.
Audio
The 24-bit, six-channel Dolby TrueHD audio in some ways sounds like an initial, unpolished pass. Dialogue is often too high in the mix -- not a complaint I'm used to making -- occasionally running so hot as to result in severe clipping. Some effects take respectable advantage of the subwoofer, with a pounding, pulsing heartbeat far and away standing out the most. I wish the TrueHD audio would bare its fangs more frequently, though, as not nearly enough effects dip as meaningfully as I'd like into the lower frequencies. The stings punctuating the scares are similarly meeker than I'd expect, and the score as a whole doesn't roar with the ferocity that's usually part and parcel of a newly-minted horror flick. On the upside, The Drownsman seizes hold of the surround channels with an intense emphasis on atmospherics, and there's probably a pun in there somewhere about how immersive the audio is in a movie where water gets so much screentime. The Drownsman has the makings of an extraordinary soundtrack, but the way it's all been pieced together hovers somewhere closer to average.
Also included are subtitles in English (SDH) and Spanish.
Extras
Nothing.
The Final Word
The Drownsman starts off as an remarkably effective tribute to the supernatural slashers of decades past, but the momentum and intrigue it establishes early on peter out far too quickly. In trying to be perhaps too faithful to A Nightmare on Elm St. and in stripping the narrative down to bare metal, the back half of the movie is dragged down by the worst of both worlds. The Drownsman showcases the tremendous talent on both sides of the camera, and writer/director Chad Archibald and lead Michelle Mylett are both names I need to keep an eye out for, but as a movie, it doesn't quite hold together. Still very much worth a rental, though, especially for longtime fanatics of Wes Craven's work in the '80s. Rent It.
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
Madison (Michelle Mylett) suffers from a fear of water so paralyzing that she barely functions as a living, breathing person. She curls up in the fetal position at the sight of the stuff, to the point that she has to take fluids intravenously. Madison abandons her duties as maid of honor on her best friend's wedding day, unable to claw her way out of bed because of the torrential downpour outside. Her closest friends can no longer stomach to see Madison like this. She's been an unrecognizably different person since the tumble she took on the docks a year earlier transformed her, tormented by visions of some waterlogged psychopath in every puddle, every bathtub, and every time someone leaves the tap running. This intervention is a last ditch effort. Either Maddy makes some serious in-roads tonight into overcoming her hydrophobia, or she'll be on her own for good. Hell, they even bring in a medium (Clare Bastable) to indulge her. The intervention doesn't take, though. Before, The Drownsman was only fixated on Madison, and his appearances were limited to disturbing visions. The séance has unshackled him, empowering him to reach through any form of water to drag Madison's friends to his dark, dank lair where they're systematically drowned. Madison feverishly tries to uncover as much about The Drownsman as she can, dead certain that something in his past may hold the secret to putting him down for good. All she has to do is survive long enough to figure out what that is...
Director/co-writer/producer Chad Archibald and I clearly grew up watching a lot of the same movies. As many '80s throwbacks as we've all seen over the past few years, The Drownsman is inspired far more by Wes Craven's supernatural killers than the more straightahead Friday the 13th-style slashers of late. Freddy Krueger could slaughter his prey in their dreams. Horace Pinker hunted his victims through power lines and telephone wires. The Drownsman, meanwhile, can attack through a medium even more inescapable. You can take yourself off the grid or dope yourself up with Hypnocil, but avoiding water in all of its forms...? Even if you somehow manage something that impossible, you'll be dead from dehydration in days. The Drownsman conjures up some really inventive kills to pair with its slasher's supernatural powers, keeping me perched on the edge of my seat even with something as routine as a girl reaching towards a noisy washing machine.
The Drownsman suffers from a couple of miscalculations, though. I respect that Chad Archibald keeps the narrative so clean and uncluttered, but it comes at a cost. None of Madison's friends have particularly distinct personalities. There aren't any splashes of color to flesh them out as people; they're defined purely by their devotion to Madison and as impending victims of the Drownsman. No snappy dialogue, no memorable traits or habits, and seemingly no life outside of being Maddy's friend or another waterlogged corpse. I mean, the newly-married Hannah (Caroline Palmer) ignores her husband on their wedding night to berate Madison, stages the intervention the day after the wedding, and never goes on a honeymoon or so much as casually mentions the guy again. Anyway, their deaths have precisely as much impact as the hydrocentric kills that Archibald and company dream up, and the best of them are out of the way halfway through the movie. There's not much to sustain interest in the back half when a significant reveal is telegraphed so far in advance, when there's no real emotional attachment to any of the remaining red shirts, and when the kills start to feel like obligations to pad the screenplay out to feature-length. The Drownsman follows the template set by A Nightmare on Elm St. to a fault. Rather than isolate its characters, spread out the fairly thin story over however many days, and overindulge its ineffective investigative angle, I can't help but think that The Drownsman might've been more unnerving and intense if the bulk of it had unspooled over the course of one hellish night instead. The water angle opens itself up to so many possibilities that I'm baffled by the need to flood an elevator to put a few of the straggling survivors in harm's way. There's suspending disbelief, and then there's that. I can buy how clean-scrubbed Madison is after a year without showers or baths more readily than that offputtingly ridiculous sequence.
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
It's doubly frustrating because The Drownsman gets so much right. The visuals are ambitious and stylish as hell. I have no idea what the movie's budget was, but the end result looks many times more expensive than I'm sure it cost to produce. I appreciate the emphasis on practical effects over CGI, which is appropriate given its '80s supernatural slasher leanings. The Drownsman strikes a very strong balance about how much to show of its titular killer. He's neither overexposed nor shown in jittery, quarter-second flashes either, and his presence is felt even when he's not on-screen, eking menace out of a sight as ordinary as a bottle of water. Michelle Mylett is phenomenal as the quite literally haunted Madison, bringing to the role both the vulnerability and the resolve that define horror's most memorable scream queens. I'm intrigued that, the Drownsman and a grieving father aside, all the key roles are played by women. There are understated glimmers of humor too.
I wish I were writing a rave review right now, and with what The Drownsman teases towards, I'm sure there'll be no shortage of wildly enthusiastic writeups of Chad Archibald's further genre efforts very soon. The Drownsman just isn't it. Flawed but enjoyable, The Drownsman is still very much worth a rental, though. Rent It.
Video
Shot with the mighty RED Epic, the definition and detail on display throughout The Drownsman can be staggering: clarity so astonishing that I feel as if I can discern each individual hair on the actresses' heads...every fiber in their clothes. Marc Forand's cinematography is outstanding as well. The Drownsman is teeming with inventive, masterfully composed shots that I'd frame and hang on my wall if I could get away with it, and I found myself continually impressed by the deft interplay between light and shadow. One early sequence has bright, candy-colored Christmas lights strung around everywhere, and that lulled me into a false sense of security. Those are the only vividly saturated colors throughout the entirety of The Drownsman, which otherwise settles on one color for a sequence and drenches every square inch of the screen in it. The movie alternates between a decent number of colors -- it's not as dominated by dingy browns and yellows as the screenshots scattered around this review might suggest -- but I'm still a little disappointed by how monochromatic so many of its sequences are. That's obviously a very deliberate visual choice on the filmmakers' part, and I'm probably the only writer out there grousing and groaning about it. Otherwise, though, I can't find much of anything to complain about. The AVC encode never shows any sign of strain, and the image isn't marred by any noise reduction of note or edge enhancement. There are some shots that look thinner and flatter than I'd expect, and video noise spikes in a handful of shots near the end, but none of that is at all a constant distraction. The Drownsman is a spectacular looking production that demands to be experienced on Blu-ray.
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
The Drownsman arrives on a BD-25 disc at its theatrical aspect ratio of 2.39:1.
Audio
The 24-bit, six-channel Dolby TrueHD audio in some ways sounds like an initial, unpolished pass. Dialogue is often too high in the mix -- not a complaint I'm used to making -- occasionally running so hot as to result in severe clipping. Some effects take respectable advantage of the subwoofer, with a pounding, pulsing heartbeat far and away standing out the most. I wish the TrueHD audio would bare its fangs more frequently, though, as not nearly enough effects dip as meaningfully as I'd like into the lower frequencies. The stings punctuating the scares are similarly meeker than I'd expect, and the score as a whole doesn't roar with the ferocity that's usually part and parcel of a newly-minted horror flick. On the upside, The Drownsman seizes hold of the surround channels with an intense emphasis on atmospherics, and there's probably a pun in there somewhere about how immersive the audio is in a movie where water gets so much screentime. The Drownsman has the makings of an extraordinary soundtrack, but the way it's all been pieced together hovers somewhere closer to average.
) |
| [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] |
Also included are subtitles in English (SDH) and Spanish.
Extras
Nothing.
The Final Word
The Drownsman starts off as an remarkably effective tribute to the supernatural slashers of decades past, but the momentum and intrigue it establishes early on peter out far too quickly. In trying to be perhaps too faithful to A Nightmare on Elm St. and in stripping the narrative down to bare metal, the back half of the movie is dragged down by the worst of both worlds. The Drownsman showcases the tremendous talent on both sides of the camera, and writer/director Chad Archibald and lead Michelle Mylett are both names I need to keep an eye out for, but as a movie, it doesn't quite hold together. Still very much worth a rental, though, especially for longtime fanatics of Wes Craven's work in the '80s. Rent It.
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