The Canal

The Canal (2014)

Runtime: 92 minutes

Directed by: Ivan Kavanagh

Starring: Rupert Evans, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Hannah Hoekstra, Kelly Byrne, Steve Oram

From: Several different Irish and UK companies

First off, WOW what a Super Bowl. I feel awful for all the Falcons fans but what a chokejob by that team. With that out of the way, The Canal is a recent horror movie worth seeing. I explain why I feel that way below: 

This was the second of two Irish movies I saw on Netflix Instant last night. I've known about this movie since it came out and despite hearing rave reviews for all that time, I put off seeing it. Well, shame on me as I should have seen this sooner.

This is about a young couple who have a son; David is a film archivist and one day he sees film where he discovers a murder happened at his home in the early 1900's. That and his fears about his wife being faithful causes him concern, and after a horrific incident... he believes he is being haunted by a supernatural presence.

I understand those who felt disappointed by the movie. No spoilers but I do understand it. While the plot was not too surprising, overall I was always interested in seeing David and how he handled his predicament and how both he and we as an audience try to figure out what's going on. In addition, there are some pretty solid scares throughout, and the final act made me go WOW a few times due to what you witness. Note that this ends up being a rather macabre tale.

I enjoyed things in front of the camera and behind it, whether it was the cinematography, the tense score, the direction, or the performances from the cast. As I previously mentioned there is a little boy present. I am usually wary of kids in movies as things can go quite awry right there. Praise the Lord then that aside from Calum Heath being a rather cute kid in his role as Billy, but that his performance wasn't aggravating and the character wasn't written to be a dopey precocious kid; henceforth, no one should let the knowledge that there are many scenes with a young boy dissuade you from seeing this. This is definitely NOT something you should watch with your young children-if you have any-though.

As others have noted, the poster currently used by Letterboxd for this movie is unfortunate; the movie appears to be yet another low-budget horror piece of crap. I've seen several arty posters for this movie that are a lot better and are more fitting for this; don't let the poster dissuade you from seeing this either.