32. The Canal

January 9th, On Demand. The Canal is an Irish horror film that was released in October and got some buzz at the Tribeca Film Festival. This one flew more under the radar than The Babadook. Written and directed by the little known Ivan Kavanagh, The Canal tells the story of a young couple David and Alice Williams (Rupert Evans and the Emma Watson-esque Hannah Hoekstra) and their 5 year old son Billy (who is not quite as creepy as the kid from The Babadook) who live in a house where a brutal murder happened back in 1902.

David begins to slowly lose his sh*t when coupled with the fact that he lives in a house that saw a husband brutally murder his wife then drown himself and his children in the canal and the that his wife is cheating on him. After he views the act of his wife's infidelity, Alice goes missing. Naturally the husband is the primary suspect but after Alice's body is pulled from the canal, the lame-ass coroner can't find any signs of foul play. This doesn't sit well with David nor Detective McNamara (Steve Oram), who likes David for the murder. David uses his skills as a film archivist to film what he thinks is a shadow (that he keeps seeing) coming toward the camera. Things come to a head around Christmas when he sees a figure in his son's hotel room. David flips out, grabs his son and the nanny and barricades them in the house. Nowhere is safe and David loses it and freaks the nanny out forcing her to go to the police and children's services.

Everything comes to a head when David's co-worker Claire (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) brings over the film that David shot to view. David is adamant about seeing the shadow but Claire doesn't see it until it's too late when the shadow grabs her as David watches helplessly. David grabs his son and flees the tunnels of the canal where he sees some serious and disturbing sh*t (trust me it's really disturbing). David tries to escape with Billy by jumping into the canal as a last resort. However, he is pulled down by a ghost and Billy is rescued by McNamara. Alice's mother now has custody of Billy. While getting ready to leave, Billy is alone in the house and hears his father's voice asking him if he wants to be with his mother and father forever (that's never good). Little Billy is seen unbuckling his seat belt and opening the car door. The last scene is of the realtor hearing a noise, looking up the stairs and catching a glimpse of Billy closing the door.

This was a pretty decent film. It did move a little slow but the end makes you forget about it. Kavanagh did a nice job with David's descent into madness. There is a truly disturbing scene in the tunnels that creeped me out and the scene with Billy inside the car was nerve wracking. The only issues other than the pace was that it seemed to me that certain big scenes were pulled from other films. David's ordeal was reminiscent of Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (especially his blackouts and when the truth hits about what he's done) and his death was right pulled from What Lies Beneath and there's a bit of Amityville Horror as well. But, I can live with that as most horror films are pulling scenes from other films. The Canal is nice low budget horror film that is not quite as good as The Babadook but it got a 80% at Rotten Tomatoes so it's definitely worth watching.