“Arcadian” Review

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In the way that a costume drama may have better threads of cloths than melodrama, Arcadian is a horror film with more thrills placed in its creatures than the humans fleeing them. I can see the mechanics at play here. The film wants to blend the dark nature of people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic environment with the visual allure of crafty and nasty creatures that eat up the remaining humans. It’s not a good sign when the wordless creatures become more compelling than the family drama at play.

Another woefully underused aspect is the presence of Nic Cage. He plays Paul, a man struggling to raise his two sons when humanity falls. After civilization crumbles, Paul mans a safe farming location to raise his teenage boys, Joseph (Jaeden Martell) and Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins). By day, they learn to drive golf carts and share meals. By night, they protect themselves from creatures with giant teeth and jaws that roam the country. Despite these nightly terrors, life goes on for the teenage boys that never lived a life without constant fear of being munched when the lights go out. This gives them enough time to establish their clashing character traits as the risk-taker and the intellectual. It also gives them enough time to fancy a girl from a neighboring farm who doesn’t take too kindly to strangers or sharing resources.

This is a film that never finds the right rhythm, despite its strength clearly being the design of the monsters. There’s rarely a moment that nails the drama, where an off-note soundtrack only makes the moments of fatherly bonding and teenage romance appear artificial. The shooting style also feels scattershot, darting between dashcams for the golf cart driving scenes and shaky cams for the indoor struggles to fight off monsters. As the film tries to create a more psychological atmosphere, there are some missed opportunities to expand more on Cage’s character beyond the expected go-ahead-without-me fatherly advice. Cage isn’t even used at his best here, falling into that boring Goldilocks zone between batshit maniac and cerebrally subtle. This picture has all the ingredients of A Quiet Place, but without the proper recipe to cook thoroughly.

The only interest comes with the nameless monsters start attacking. Looking like a cross between Maurice Sendak’s and Studio Ghibli’s designs, these gruesome figures are as cool to look as they are in their movements. I love how they don’t just sink their teeth into their prey, but have a feasting ritual. They stick out their jaws and snap their teeth together repeatedly before going in for the kill. It’s such a fascinating detail that it made me wish the film took more of a Tremors route by examining how these creatures function, especially when they start surprising with their tactics as the film goes on.

Arcadian puts on its best creature-feature suit for a lukewarm backyard BBQ of a picture. It is a ho-hum coming-of-age story after the fall of civilization, made more appealing by the fantastic monsters that snap their jaws and chow down on humans. I didn’t care much for the bog-standard teenage characters of an apocalypse or what might happen to them in a sequel. But those jaw-snapping monsters? Bring them back in a giddy assault on a mobile home community or urban wasteland and I’ll zoom to that picture faster than those four-legged terrors can scurry into a human-infested farmhouse.