Spiral

2019 Directed by Kurtis David Harder

Fear is everywhere

A same-sex couple move to a small town so they can enjoy a better quality of life and raise their 16 year-old daughter with the best social values. But nothing is as it seems in their picturesque neighbourhood. And when Malik sees the folks next door throwing a very strange party, something very shocking has got to give.

Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman Ari Cohen Jennifer Laporte Ty Wood Lochlyn Munro Chandra West Paul McGaffey Thomas Elms Aaron Poole Megan Tracz David LeReaney Jasmin Nagy Lara Taillon Michelle Wienecke Darius Willis Jaron Melanson Daniel Derksen

87 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Dyrnott ★★★★

A very good movie if you are patient with it. It is a slow burn but I felt mesmerized by some of the later scenes in the movie! Almost like it’s comforting then you don’t realize it is slowly sucking your brains out lol It’s very nicely done and shot very well! I would have like some more history of what is going on. If you haven’t seen it check it out!
Review by Bunny🐰 ★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Same old narrative with a progressive angle in it, spiral falls short on every aspect other than acting, whether it be scares, tension, twists or atmosphere all of them lacked originality.
Spiral could have been a really good flick actually, if you weren't scared to go that extra mile banking on things when you are focusing on a gay couple in 1995, things that they had to go through on everyday basis specially in an isolated community, things that are offensive, disturbing and disgusting, you could have generated scares from it but there was just one thing the f...... word and other than that it plays out like a normal film in that scenario, yes there weren't many jump scares…
Review by WraithApe ★ 24

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Films like this really piss me off. Films that take themselves oh so seriously and think they're making an original point through allegory and yet are so transparent you could hang it on the wall and call it a window. To echo a sentiment expressed by Bret Easton Ellis, it would be nice if we'd reached a point where we could have a black, gay lead character in a film where race and sexuality weren't the primary focus; where the fact that the central couple were in a same sex relationship was an incidental detail. What we get here is exactly the kind of film I think he had in mind when making that comment - a vacuous victim narrative…
Review by Allison M. 🌱 ★½

Shudder Film #14
Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman plays Malik -- the character's name was repeated so many times that it bordered on insanity. The dialogue was pretty outlandish (so bad, it's good/funny?).
This was the movie that was "chosen" for a Halloween watch party on Twitter through Shudder. I organized it based on a Twitter poll. It became apparent that there were other films named Spiral and perhaps there was some confusion for what film people were voting for.
It didn't make complete sense to set it in the past (1983) and then bring us closer to the present (2005), which felt arbitrary.
The actual premise is pretty decent: a gay couple moving into a small town neighborhood and experiencing sinister behavior from all the straight people. However, its execution felt cheap and limited. Comparisons to Get Out are pretty unwarranted, because Get Out was actually pretty effective.
Review by pd187 ★★★ 8

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

is this set in the 90s so the gay couple could be 90s-tv bland or is it just canadian? anyway its pretty creepy! suxx that slowburn ritual/cultsploitation reads as a24-astercore to anybody born after elian gonzalez but thats not rly this movies fault. weird how (spoilers) this never lets anybody say the f@g word but can show a dude feasting on a teen girl's hollowed-out guts, anthropophagus style. decent watch but ironically kept wishing/hoping to myself "it('d) get better" lol
Review by HeavenSentbutHellRaised87 ★★★½ 5

Decent supernatural mystery thriller centered around a gay couple who move into a small town with their 16 year old daughter. This family is hoping for a fresh start and new beginnings but there is something off about this town and its ppl...
Very ominous as the film makes u feel uneasy from the start. Once the story begins focusing more on one character's slow descent into madness things get a bit loopy. It becomes hard to tell whether he's hallucinating or just flat out loosing his mind.
Spiral has a nice setup but I just felt like the ending was rushed. I wanted to know more about these ppl and the town. Still a decent watch overall
Review by coles84 ★★★★½ 4

SPIRAL gave me shudders, made me cry and had me on the edge of my seat wanting to save our protagonists. An emotional rollercoaster that is equally heartbreaking and thrilling.
The score, writing and acting were sewn together perfectly.
Easily entered my top 3 of FrightFest and shows the excellence of Colin Minihans writing qualities. The film is paced extremely well and combines the atmosphere of ROSEMARYS BABY with GET OUT to fill your brain with fear and uncertainty. Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman is stunning in the lead and portrays every ounce of emotion his character is capable of.
Unsure when this will be released but deserves to be seen by many when it is, its tremendously gripping and will pull at the heart strings while ensuring you get your horror fix.
Review by Taylor Heider ★★½ 1

I have pretty much nothing to say about this at all because it's bland, unoriginal, fuck it's like the fourth movie I've seen this year about white suburban cults which to be clear is a subgenre I usually enjoy, but when you know exactly what is going to happen within like 10 minutes of the movie starting... what's the point? Gimme something GOOD. Give me some crazy mutant Karens. I want the evil white suburban people to be secret reptilianz who eat people's faces off or maybe there is one Karen ruling them all who is an ancient cryptid/cthulu-type shapeshifting monster that they must feed. Can we maybe go wild? Do something cRaZy?!? Please?
I don't hate this at all it's just very mediocre. Although, it was nice to see the main characters be a gay couple since horror movies rarely have good lgbtq+ representation so it has one plus.
Review by Vyronas Leonidas ★★½ 1

Real life gay couple would never allow that terrible 80s wood paneling like ever. What. Why was that ever a thing.
Apparently, no one can figure out how to represent intersectionality in horror yet.
Review by Trevor Wang ★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Let's get it straight! Directed by Kurtis David Harder, Spiral is frequently compared to Jordan Peele's Get Out, which also focuses on a black protagonist unknowingly becoming the target of a mysterious white cult ritual in a remote village. Thematically, Spiral is reminiscent of Get Out, but the main difference is that it is very intentionally and respectfully gay, which is a huge deal within the film's context and beyond!
Same-sex couples in the United States have faced social stigma and discrimination for a really long time, especially in more reserved small towns. When Malik and Aaron move to a small town with their 16 year-old daughter in pursuit of a higher life quality, they start to experience countless strange…
Review by lauren t 🥀🌿 ★★★ 2

so, this is a tough one to sort my feelings out on. I adore Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, and he was great as Malik (this prob would’ve been more like 2.5 if it weren’t for him). I also thought this had some beautiful shots and effective moments. however, while I appreciated where they wanted to take the message, man did they ever wear it on the sleeve from the start. the problem for me was, it was done in a way that makes you feel they don’t trust the audience enough to get it without making it extremely overt. I also found some of the scares a bit weak, and there were some points in the story that were really frustrating. it all felt a little too familiar, not executed cleverly enough, and it ended up being just okay for me.
Review by nick ★½

gay people are real😔❤️

Recent reviews

Review by isaac jackson-nock ★★

i wanted to like this SO BAD!!! SO BAD!! the final 10 minutes were good though
Review by Guyzo997 ★★½ 3

Essentially “Get Out” for LGBTs, but even less subtlety and a dumber twist. A biracial homosexual couple moves in to a small town, and the black one soon gets more and more paranoid that the community is hiding a horrible secret. Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman is great in a hopelessly shallow role, and Kurtis David Hardee’s direction is solid.
But the script is really flat, and the social commentary felt like it took precedence over a good story. There’s a few sections where the perspective switches to the teen daughter for no reason. I guess it was to add in ambiguity as to who was responsible for the homophobic stuff happening? Instead upon finishing the movie it felt completely superfluous.
It’s not…
Review by museummouth ★★½

Solid enough slow burn cult horror with social commentary that didn’t feel too “woke.” Ending was rushed though.
Review by NightOwlishe ½

CW: Homophobia
“People don’t change Liam, they just get better at hiding how they feel”
Do we really need a movie about supernatural events targeting a gay couple while LGBTQ+ people are still being murdered every single day for being themselves, in real life? The absolute gall of these cishets to say to queer viewers' faces that homophobia is bad and expecting us to be impressed as if we don’t already deal with this shit. Fuck off.
Other than that, it's got that same issue a lot of other "message" movies have where every line seems awkwardly crammed into the character’s mouths. The characters only exist to get across the screenwriters' point and that's about it.
The supernatural horror is…
Review by sirdudethedude ★★★

I was sorta hoping for a bigger reveal after all that slow burn build up, but it ended up being pretty much exactly what I thought would happen.
Review by Aleister Burgun ★★★★

Feels very much in the vein of Get Out, a social thriller with elements of horror. Feels less smooth and sleek than Get Out however, meaner and sharper in comparison.
Disorienting, uncomfortable, heart-in-your-throat.
Review by jardonmax ★★½

Rosemary's Baby (1968) dir. Ryan Murphy
Review by Epsylon ★★

too obvious, kinda boring for me :(
Review by AK ★★★★★

“What’s the word for an Uncle Tom but for gay people?”
Also, more proof that white people should all be listening to the POC in our lives more
Review by natalie 💫 ★★★

I think this film was created first and foremost as a vehicle for its socio-political messaging. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but it is pretty heavy handed from the get go.
However, I was unsettled by a lot of this! The editing is good, the suspense is good, the use of trauma to create tension about what is and isn’t real was interesting, even if it had me worried the film was goi g to end on a nihilistic and problematic note.
I didn’t LOVE this movie, but I respect what it was doing and was okay with some weird script choices because I thought the overall atmosphere was compelling. I was invested in the mystery and surprised whenever the main character did something desperately stupid.
Overall, a very good pick to watch for free on shudder.
Review by Avery Hart ★★★

*sweating profusely* uh heh, no homo...
Review by November ★★★

aside from centering on a gay interracial couple, this is just a standard, predictable thriller. while i appreciate the representation, that can only take you so far.
the scares mostly fall flat and main characters' inability to work together is frustrating to watch. why don't the protagonists ever just talk to each other in these films?! i feel like a lot more could be done with this premise, but the execution here is mediocre at best.