JP Nunez
I’ve been super excited for Arcadian ever since I first heard about it. It’s a monster movie with Nicolas Cage, and I don’t know about you, but that’s enough to get me on board. I love Nicolas Cage, and I’m a huge fan of monsters, so naturally, I figured this film would be right up my alley. I requested a screener as soon as I could, and when I finally got the chance to watch it, I couldn’t wait to see what bonkers Nic Cage moments it had in store.
Arcadian was directed by Benjamin Brewer, and it stars Nicolas Cage, Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins, and Sadie Soverall. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic, almost A Quiet Place-esque world where civilization has been decimated, and a man named Paul lives a mostly tranquil life with his two sons, Thomas and Joseph…at least during the day.
The nights are ruled by bizarre, photosensitive monsters that will tear a person to shreds, so Paul and his boys have to make sure they’re indoors before the sun goes down. For 15 years, they’ve been able to survive this never-ending nightmare, but as you can probably guess, a family’s luck can only last so long.
On paper, that sounds like a really cool idea for a horror movie, but unfortunately, the characters make Arcadian a real slog to get through. To be fair, the performances are pretty good. These characters all feel like real people, not just actors reading lines, so when the film began, I was actually on board with them.
But as the story goes on, it becomes clear that they’re not strong enough to carry an entire 90-minute movie. There’s just nothing all that interesting or charming about them, so even though they feel real, I simply couldn’t bring myself to care about them.
Even Nicolas Cage’s character, Paul, is a huge letdown. Arcadian is primarily about his sons, so Paul doesn’t get nearly as much screen time as I thought he would. To make matters worse, he never gets a chance to go all-out Nic Cage, so this guy is just a huge wasted opportunity all around.
That being said, bad characters don’t automatically spell ruin for a creature feature. If a film has enough fun monster action, that can make up for any deficiencies on the human side, but unfortunately, Arcadian doesn’t even have that going for it.
Yes, this is a monster movie, but up until the last few minutes, it plays more like a drama than anything else. There are some cool horror scenes peppered in here and there, but they’re very few and far between. The film focuses primarily on the humans and their relationships, and since I just couldn’t care about any of these people, the story did absolutely nothing for me.
But despite that fatal flaw, Arcadian isn’t a complete waste of time. The monsters are pretty cool, so whenever they come to the fore, the movie gets a lot better. These creatures are somewhat humanoid, but on the whole, they look and move more like the unholy offspring of the aliens from Attack the Block and (at times, at least) a Demogorgon from Stranger Things. What’s more, they can bend and extend their limbs in really strange, almost supernatural ways, and when they band together, they can form a gigantic ball that’s very reminiscent of the Crites in the Critters franchise.
If that combination sounds a bit confusing, don’t worry. Even though I just finished watching Arcadian, I’m still not entirely sure what these things really are. They feel like an amalgamation of a few different movie monsters, and somehow, it mostly works. In particular, their seemingly unnatural combination of disparate traits gives them an otherworldly, almost uncanny valley sort of vibe, so whenever they’re on screen, they’re sure to send a chill or two down your spine.
However, there was one thing I didn’t like about these creatures. They can snap their mouths open and shut multiple times in blindingly quick succession, and while that ability may sound cool on paper, it comes across as rather cartoonish on screen. It even took me out of the story a couple of times, so these monsters aren’t quite as good as the various beasts that inspired them.
On top of the (mostly) cool creature design, director Benjamin Brewer also uses these monsters to craft some genuinely tense horror moments, and there’s one in particular that really had me on the edge of my seat. I don’t want to give away too much about the scene, but it involves a creature sticking its arm through a door, and it shows just how eldritch these things really are. The monster continually unfolds and stretches itself out in ways you won’t see coming, and the camera doesn’t look away until the very end. This moment is the perfect combination of creepy and suspenseful, so I loved every second of it.
But unfortunately, scenes like that don’t come around too often. As I said before, Arcadian focuses way more on the human drama than the monster mayhem, and that human drama doesn’t work at all. The characters are so bland I simply couldn’t care about anything that happened to them, so even though there’s some good horror in here, it’s not nearly enough to salvage the experience.
Arcadian is set to hit theaters on April 12.
