The striking imagery doesn't quite overcome the convoluted story, but it's a serviceable horror film with decent tension.
You ever have one of those movies that you see stoned and you’re like, “wow, this is amazing,” and then you see it again (sober) a few years later and you’re like, “................hmmm........................why?”
This Irish horror film is one of those movies for me. The story in this thing is a confused mess, just a giant hodgepodge of hodgepodgery. It jams together elements of a haunted house story (the titular canal is also haunted and for some reason so is a nearby public bathroom), with a storyline about a weird child-sacrificing cult, with a lot of psychological thriller elements about whether it’s all in the main character’s head, and a good dose of possessed film reels, and a scene ostensibly taken straight from
Ring (1998), get dumped in just for good measure as well. It’s basically a circus of random supernatural villains chasing the protagonist through a hallway of doors
Scooby-Doo style as he tries to discover how his wife’s dead body ended up in the canal.
That being said, even with a plot that’s like a jigsaw puzzle missing most of its pieces, the rest is quite good. The performances from the cast are committed and heart-rending;
Kavanagh does a fantastic job building tension and there’s some legitimately unnerving scenes; and I love the expressionistic lighting used throughout the film. Cinematographers
Piers McGrail and
Albi Sheridan often use Christmas lights to phenomenal effect.
So although I can’t say that overall
The Canal is a “good” horror movie, and high Luke’s reverence for it is suspect at best, it’s still an enjoyable watch with a lot of striking imagery, and you know what, sometimes that’s #goodenough
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