‘How long can you hold your breath?’
The Drownsman is a 2014 Canadian horror film produced and directed by Chad Archibald from a screenplay co-written with Cody Calahan (Antisocial). It stars Michelle Mylett, Caroline Korycki, Gemma Bird Matheson, Sydney Kondruss, Clare Bastable, and Ry Barrett.
Plot:
‘After almost drowning in a lake, Madison finds herself bound to a life of fear. Unable to describe what happened to her during the moments she was underwater, Madison begins to develop hydrophobia: an abnormal fear of water.
Crippled by her post trauma, Madison attempts to shut out the world around her but, her fear intensifies when she begins to be haunted by the vision of an evil figure.
After watching her struggle for over a year, Madison’s four friends stage an intervention in a desperate attempt to help. In doing so, they accidentally open a floodgate to a dark place where none of them is safe.
As Madison and her friends dive deeper into the dark history of the evil that haunts them, they’re dragged one by one to a horrifying place where they may never return.
Reviews:
“As a homage to the works of Carpenter, Craven et al. it works. As an origin story for a new franchise villain it works. As a movie? Well if you’re willing to ignore the odd flaw even in the films own internal logic like I did, then The Drownsman works. If not…” Nerdly
“Many slashers compensate for uninteresting characters with gruesome and varied splatter scenes, but The Drownsman can’t quite oblige, not when each death sequence has its slasher simply dragging people to his dungeon and submerging them in one torture device or another. It’s an excruciating fate but also a dull one…” Oh, the Horror!
Buy Blu-ray: Amazon.com
Background:
“We set out to make a film that created a new supernatural villain like the classic horror films of Clive Barker and Wes Craven, something that has become rare in the horror industry over the last decade,” explains writer/director Chad Archibald. “Similar to Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Pinhead and Jason Voorhees, we wanted to create a villain with a rich history and a juicy hook that could make an appearance in a few viewers nightmares.’
Trailer:
