10 Brilliant Horror Movie Concepts Not Taken Far Enough
2. The Beach House (2019)
Although this film is timely given the current world situation, this nature-strikes-back flick is not all it could've been.
The film tells the story of a young couple deciding to spend some time at the titular beach house. Things seem amiss as a glowing fog descends upon them at night and the water takes on a sickly sludge-like appearance the next day. Soon those around the young lovers become unhinged, irrational creatures that foam at the mouth as the fog descends once more.
The Beach House drops many intriguing hints but never expands on everything it could and we ultimately have more questions than answers. Shocking scenes such as a character removing a tentacle-like parasite from her foot or finding a horribly deformed human in a basement whet the appetite. The latter scene in particular makes the viewer yearn for more... How did an ordinary human become this monstrosity? What did that process look like? One can't help but feel this film missed the opportunity to show off some incredibly visceral body-horror and effects driven transformation sequences.
An eerie, fog-shrouded atmosphere keeps the viewer interested, but we ultimately come away from The Beach House feeling there is a lot more story to be told. One also can't help but wonder how these events are affecting the world at large. We see and hear very little beyond our two protagonists, and if there's anything we love in a horror movie its large-scale chaos, though the small scale of the film is understandable given the budgetary limitations.
But... does that mean we'll get a sequel to answer some of our many queries?