Review: Pod (2015)
Directed by: Mickey Keating
Starring: Lauren Ashley Carter, Dean Cates, Brian Morvant
Written by: Mickey Keating
Music by: Giona Ostinelli
Country: United States
Available on: DVD (Vertical Entertainment)
IMDb
Indie writer/director Mickey Keating has done some really interesting shit in his brief stint on the scene (Darling, Carnage Park, Psychopaths), but I was introduced to his frenetic, abstruse style with 2015’s Pod, his second feature. It’s a very short, very simple sci fi horror flick about a brother and a sister who stage an intervention with their emotionally unstable brother, who’s holed up in the family lake house, ranting about an alien in his basement. Understandably, his siblings write this off as paranoid delusion, but you guessed it: there might actually be something unpleasant in that basement.
Keating gets right down to business with a first act that sets up the fiction-conventional but still dramatic triad of personalities that constitute this dysfunctional family. Ed (Dean Cates) is the overbearing oldest, Lyla (Lauren Ashley Carter) is the baby, and Martin (Brian Morvant) is the fuck-up, who was dishonorably discharged from the military after brutally attacking a nurse. There’s nothing new here, but all the main actors — particularly Carter and Morvant — give it their all in messily splaying their crazy. The middle third is mostly a very long, frenzied rant from Martin about government experimentation, pods, aliens, and little shards of background that do just enough to infuse some depth. Again, nothing distinctive, but Morvant convincingly flails between confusion, fear, anger, doubt, and bitter conviction.
The first 50 minutes or so are heavily devoted to arguments within the well-worn family dynamic, but it does serve as an effective build-up to a finale that’s all the more shocking due to the at-times grinding banality that led to it. Things take a sharp 90-degree turn during the final 20 minutes, straight into what would be a great episode of The X-Files or The Twilight Zone. Though what, exactly, is in the basement is never really explained, what’s in there is fucking creepy. Keating does such a fantastic job shooting its onscreen appearances, allowing the audience to see, through strobing lights and tight quarters, just enough of whatever-the-fuck it is to send a chill down your spine without shedding the mystery. Larry Fessenden shows up in a brief cameo to do what he’s grown fond of doing lately: spend five minutes on screen throwing a goddamn wrench into everything. The last portion of Pod is so exceedingly captivating and terrifying that you nearly forget that the movie was only 75 minutes long and a huge chunk of it was irritating characters seeing who could squabble louder.
A lot about Pod, in particular its editing and sound design, is very frantic, pretty disorienting, kind of obnoxious, but mostly potent. It’s a maelstrom of sudden shrill noises and flashes of unnerving imagery that sometimes feels like a manipulative cheat. But it succeeds in tipping the audience off balance, so I guess it’s justified. This assault on the senses aside, Keating’s love affair with ambiguity is going to annoy people; Pod ends where your typical apocalyptic horror movie would begin, only hinting at the larger universe beyond two brothers, a sister, and a snow-sequestered house on a frozen lake. It reminds me of indie genre flicks like Banshee Chapter that leverage obscurity as part of their arsenal, for better or worse (psst … it’s for better). “That’s it?” might pop into mind when the credits roll, but you should try to banish that nonsense and focus on the tight, modest, and supremely unsettling film Keating lays down.
Overall rating: 8 out of 10
