Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Block Island Sound’ on Netflix, Where Elements of Paranoia, Horror, and Science Fiction Float On Open Water

The Block Island Sound (Netflix) is slick indie filmmaking, a psychedelic horror hybrid that tests the waters of paranoia and conspiracy to track the strange goings-on in a tiny island community in the American northeast. What’s killing all the fish and birds? Don’t touch that dial…

THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A guttural, inhuman growl greets us at the outset of The Block Island Sound, and as a disoriented, frightened man comes to on a boat pitching in the sea, we’re left to wonder how he got all the way out there. This is a fishing community with a maritime tradition, wise to the ways of the sound. But something unknown is killing fish by the ton and knocking birds from the sky, and whatever it is, it might also be warping the mental keel of that man from the boat. His name is Tom (Neville Archambault), and his hard headed son Harry (Chris Sheffield) is too much of a skeptic and a lush to consider the larger implications of his father’s odd behavior, or his pal Dale (Jim Cummings) and his ranting about chemtrails, mind control, and conspiracies afoot on the island.

Before long, Tom is dead. Harry is joined on the island by his sister and EPA researcher Audry (Michaela McManus), who is investigating the dead fish situation but also becomes witness to Harry’s increasingly unhinged behavior. Harry begins “losing time,” waking up floating on the open water in the family boat, just like his father had; he hears an inhuman growling noise; he sees visions of his dead dad. Digital signals encounter interference; the wind farm turbines rest offshore, sentinels of technological drift. And all the while the townspeople are whispering about what happened to Tom, and who was to blame. Small towns are full of secrets, after all, and everybody knows everybody’s business. But on Block Island, the mundane mysteries of troubled folks in town seem to be compounding into one giant revelation, something that connects the unknown of the vast starry night with what lives in the darkness of the salty deep.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The Block Island Sound forgoes the gobs of fake blood, but it plays heartily with the forces of isolation and psychological claustrophobia that draw Danny Huston and his band of scary vamps to Barrow, Alaska in 30 Days of Night. Block Island will also surface your Jaws memories, of course, with its Northeast coastal setting and pitching watercraft on the open sea. But it’s notable that Jim Cummings appears in the cast here, as he wrote and directed 2020’s Wolf of Snow Hollow, a werewolf tale set in a small, isolated town.

Performance Worth Watching: As Audry, Michaela McManus mixes the determination that drove her to the mainland and a job at the EPA with the strength of a woman raising a kid on her own and the sensibilities and natural chemistry of a sister returning to her hometown, tasked with connecting to her out-of-sorts hothead brother. McManus is the emotional center of Block Island Sound, and she plays Audry with a welcoming sense of realism.

Memorable Dialogue: “It’s all connected. Dead birds in the water. Dead fish in the water. Your dad in the water…” As Dale, Harry’s conspiracy theorist buddy, Jim Cummings is every part of the archetype. Sucking at his cigarette from inside a hoodie, eyes bugging behind square frames. Stacks of manila folders stuffed with “the truth,” and a garage-cum-conspiracy den where he monitors the monitors. Don’t worry, society — Dale’s on the case.

Sex and Skin: None to speak of.

Our Take: With its ominous loom tuned to a precise, fiendishly foreboding degree, The Block Island Sound makes forays into conspiracy theory, paranoia, small town suspicion, and fractious family ties even as darkness consumes its center. It’s a nifty feat for this independent, written and directed by the brotherly duo Kevin McManus and Matthew McManus, who no doubt drew on their Northeastern roots to bring the dynamic at work in Block Island to life. As Harry steadily loses all sense of reality, the durable goods of everyday life on the island — the endless churn of the sound, the timeline of the ferry, the weight of isolation, and the inevitability of local scuttlebutt — become characters in what is either Harry’s descent into madness or a succumbing to sinister larger forces. The sense of place in The Block Island Sound is palpable.

Gripping, too, is this film’s manifestation of its scare factor, once it finally arrives at that junction. (Admittedly, that takes awhile — this is genre horror set on simmer.) With nimble, creative camera work and terrific sound editing, the revelation of the enveloping force at work, out on the open sea and in the tortured mind of the town’s inhabitants, is powerful, charged with horror and suspense tradition but represented through the personal lens of character. In The Block Island Sound, paranoia strikes deep. Sometimes humanity would do well to further examine that space where it lands.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Block Island Sound is an impressively-crafted horror indie with a boatload of suspense, a great sense of character, and the ability to frighten with neither ghostly nor bloody interference.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges