Spiral: Review

12th September 2020

In Spiral, Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) and Aaron (Ari Cohen) are taking their daughter, Kayla (Jennifer Laporte) to a new home where they can make a fresh start as a family. They’ve gone through a lot together and with Aaron coming out to his wife, they know all too well that people can be nice on the surface, only for their true colors to show.

Sure enough, when they arrive there are microaggressions from people such as a neighbor who just stares at them from a distance when they leave the house and the surprise that they get from people when they tell them they’re a couple, but they’re used to that by now.

However, the aggression in the neighborhood slowly starts to get stronger and Malik starts to think that there may be something more sinister underneath the suburban façade.

Spiral is a horror movie and Shudder original directed by Kurtis David Hader and written by Colin Minihan and John Poliquin. It’s set up may seem familiar to fans of Get Out, but Spiral still has something unique to say.

Using many familiar horror tropes to get its point across and scare its audience, Spiral is familiar and yet new as not many gay couples get to be the leads in horror – if any at all. Kayla also attracts the attention of local bad boy, Tyler (Ty Wood) although when Malik and Aaron meet his parents, Marshal (Lochlyn Munro) and Tiffany (Chandra West) they decide that she’s just going through what every girl her age experiences, but they’re still keeping eye on her.

The problem is that Malik’s paranoia is getting the better of him and as he starts to doubt his validity as a parent, he starts to lose his grip on reality.

A unique and yet familiar premise, Spiral’s focus on a parent rather than an out of her depth teen helps to explore what it means for a gay couple to be raising a child when it feels like the world is against them. In a horror setting, Spiral manages to excite, scare and even show its audience a perspective they may not have been considering, right down to the grisly end.

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