The Beach House of Death!

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Emily (Liana Liberato) and Randall (Noah Le Gros), a pair of college sweethearts, decide to take a little vacation at a beach house that Randall’s father owns. It’s supposed to be a getaway for the two of them to work on their troubled relationship. Emily wants to go to graduate school but Randall has dropped out of college and wants to drift for a while. All of this gets further complicated when they find that an older couple is living at the beach house already, unbeknownst to Randall, with the okay of Randall’s estranged father. This becomes a bit awkward, but both parties agree to make the best of it and spend the first night grilling out and eating cannabis edibles and getting to know one another. What they don’t know, but will soon discover, is that some strange infection is creeping in from the sea waters outside of the beach house. The next morning, things start to go horribly wrong, and Emily finds herself in a terrifying situation, as those around her are infected and changing, becoming…something else. She goes on the run to try and get to safety, to reach help, only to find this contagion has spread much farther than she thought. Can she escape this deadly new reality or will it finally consume her?

Something is creeping up on you...

The Beach House is the kind of film that takes its time. That’s not to say that it’s boring in any way because it’s not. There is an uneasy dread that slowly creeps its way into the story and into the lives of the characters, soaking in bit by bit. Nothing is ever quite what it seems and each of the characters feel untrustworthy, even our main protagonist Emily. They’re all hiding something, or giving off the vibe that they’re hiding something, and all of their relations feel very superficial and distant. A gathering of a pair of couples becomes as uncomfortable as possibly with nary a monster or villain in sight. And then the real horror begins, about fifty minutes in, when these strange things wash ashore, and it just gets crazier from there. This is equal parts Body Horror mixed with Cosmic Horror, as the natural world around our characters is changing by the second, and Emily and the others are trying to keep up as best they can. Their humanity is tested to its limits, but it all seems so hopeless, especially when the very air they breathe appears to be infected with whatever it is that’s going on out there. Wonderfully paranoid, crushingly hopeless, The Beach House vibrates with terror, with horrors growing under the skin and in the mind, erupting forth and pushing humanity into a new phase of existence. Or is it? Maybe they’ve all just gone crazy from the infection.

There's something lurking in the fog...

Highly recommended for those who love their visceral thrills mixed with a heady mindfuck, this new film by Jeffrey A. Brown is a real, terrifying experience. And in our Covid-19 reality, this might hit a little too close to home for some. Just be a little patient at the beginning, and soon you’ll be sucked into the mystery and the horror. After watching this, your next trip to the beach won’t be quite as much fun.

★★★☆