‘Arcadian’: SXSW Review

Dir: Ben Brewer. US/Ireland. 2024. 92mins

A post-apocalyptic horror fable, Arcadian is a creature feature composed of cheap thrills and silent chills. Nicolas Cage performs light duty as a father of two teenage boys who have spent their entire lives fearing the ruthless monsters that come out at night. It’s a thinly-drawn film that cares more about the entertainment value of its indelibly designed creatures than its human characters. Such a myopic focus would normally be a bad sign but here, with terrifying specters capable of scaring the daylights out of audiences, you can’t help but be swept up by the skin-crawling vision projected by the film.

The design of the monsters is nearly worth the price of admission alone

After premiering at SXSW, Arcadian (formally known as Sand And Stones) will release in the US through RJLE on April 12 before heading to Shudder. It has an uncompromising rough-around-the-edges aesthetic that combines fairy-tale whimsy with brutal, gory deaths to satiate genre fans. One would also expect the presence of a genre veteran like Cage to give it a strong chance at being a B-picture with cult movie aspirations. 

We first see Paul (Cage) frantically running through a war torn city, where bullets and bombs are exploding. This is the end of the world. The place he’s running to is the countryside – the film shot in and around Dublin – where his two infant sons wait for his return. Flash forward 15 years, and the adventurous Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) and analytical Joseph (Jaedan Martell) now live on a farm with Paul. Despite the rustic dreamland, the trio live in fear. Every night they literally batten down the hatches to protect against the marauding monsters who have disrupted civilisation and are on the prowl for some savoury prey.

Even with an ongoing apocalypse, however, boys will be boys. Thomas often ditches his household chores to visit the neighbouring Rose Farm, owned by a wealthy family so loaded they have hired guns to keep these creatures at bay. No matter what excuse Thomas gives to his father, he isn’t there to do odd jobs for the clan: he has a crush on their daughter Charlotte (Sadie Soverall). 

Mike Nilon’s thin script is light on detail — the origin of these monsters remains an enigma, only hinted at by a game played by Thomas and Charlotte in which they have to make up pithy stories about how the world ended. One version has it that a virus wiped out humanity and another version theorises that humans mutated into those monsters. And the characters and the obstacles they face are mostly cliches. A sibling rivalry leads to a major dust-up between brothers; the rich Rose family isn’t as giving as you’d expect, teasing an underdeveloped commentary on the haves and have-nots; young love survives all comers.

Yet the screenplay knows what beats to hit. Eventually the precarious fight for survival comes to a head when Thomas, hurrying back home after visiting Charlotte, slips and falls into a cavern. It’s up to Paul to retrieve his son at night; a rescue mission that debilitates the father, strangely putting Cage out of commission for much of the movie. 

Brewer also knows that his audience are most interested in the man-eating creatures, and the design of these monsters is nearly worth the price of admission alone. Their long chompers and arachnoid climbing recall A Quiet Place. Serious hair-raising scenes happen whenever these predators sneak up, their long arms unfurling like branches from a tree toward their unsuspecting victims. Even better is how they can combine as one, forming a giant wheel of beasts tumbling toward their kill. Any scenes involving Thomas and Joseph fending them off is a guttural treat of spewed brains and harsh screeches.

A knowing Soverall steals nearly every scene, and would run off with the whole movie if her character were not so one-dimensional. Before the end, Cage also returns for a big, crowd pleasing tango with a few brutes. And while Arcadian is far from being a new modern horror masterpiece, it makes for a satisfying B-movie romp.