I’ll likely go to my grave preaching that Fox Television’s stellar The X-Files (1993-2002) was one of the best weekly procedurals to have aired on the Boob Tube ever.
So many of its hours worked exclusively on the level of storytelling magic. A puzzle would be introduced in its opening moments, one requiring the intervention or inspection of the U.S.’s Federal Bureau of Investigation – fallen on very hard times as of late thanks mostly to political shenanigans of a particular party – and an investigation would be launched. Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would arrive on the scene – he a staunch believer in the occasionally implausible and she a pronounced skeptic – and they’d begin peeling back the layers of obfuscation in order to get as close to a resolution there was. Well, the truth usually remained “out there” (as the program’s tagline promised), and the best audiences generally received was a comfortable middle ground – a position that served both the ordinary and the extraordinary. Then, next week, an all-new predicament appeared, allowing the process to begin again.
Since the show’s demise (a double ending if you consider it’s rather unengaging relaunch in 2016 and 2018), viewers have been hungry for anything like-minded to fill that void. Alas, nothing quite like it has ever surfaced – or perhaps it’s more accurate to suggest that nothing has suitably filled that void, though shows like Fringe (2008-2013) and Evil (2019-2024) arguably got very, very close – and the faithful have had to make do with the occasional big or small budget motion picture to whet their appetites for such conundrums. Features like Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977), Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978), and The Arrival (1996) definitely resemble some of X’s machinations with its ideas regarding alien invasions; and I’ll always happily add smaller and quieter prospects like Upstream Color (2013), Lola (2022), Brooklyn 45 (2023) for those with the patience to enjoy something thematically similar.
Thankfully, I’ve another one I can add to that short list: 2020’s The Block Island Sound definitely explores territory not all that unlike the stomping grounds that Mulder and Scully traveled.
In fact, I’d argue that it’s the kind of wraparound tale that those agents would most likely have been called in on after bureaucracies like Homeland Security and the Coast Guard came up short in explaining aware the curiosities. Written and directed for the screen by the McManus Brothers of Kevin and Matthew, it’s a story that blends a few genres – much like X’s best hours did so well – while giving watchers some interesting circumstances played out by impressive talent, so much so that this is an easy ‘thumbs up’ recommendation right at the front of my review. However, its pacing and the lack of any real closure might have some only giving it a cursory once over then heading back to TV syndication for X-Files reruns in order to digest the real thing.
So many of its hours worked exclusively on the level of storytelling magic. A puzzle would be introduced in its opening moments, one requiring the intervention or inspection of the U.S.’s Federal Bureau of Investigation – fallen on very hard times as of late thanks mostly to political shenanigans of a particular party – and an investigation would be launched. Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would arrive on the scene – he a staunch believer in the occasionally implausible and she a pronounced skeptic – and they’d begin peeling back the layers of obfuscation in order to get as close to a resolution there was. Well, the truth usually remained “out there” (as the program’s tagline promised), and the best audiences generally received was a comfortable middle ground – a position that served both the ordinary and the extraordinary. Then, next week, an all-new predicament appeared, allowing the process to begin again.
Since the show’s demise (a double ending if you consider it’s rather unengaging relaunch in 2016 and 2018), viewers have been hungry for anything like-minded to fill that void. Alas, nothing quite like it has ever surfaced – or perhaps it’s more accurate to suggest that nothing has suitably filled that void, though shows like Fringe (2008-2013) and Evil (2019-2024) arguably got very, very close – and the faithful have had to make do with the occasional big or small budget motion picture to whet their appetites for such conundrums. Features like Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977), Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978), and The Arrival (1996) definitely resemble some of X’s machinations with its ideas regarding alien invasions; and I’ll always happily add smaller and quieter prospects like Upstream Color (2013), Lola (2022), Brooklyn 45 (2023) for those with the patience to enjoy something thematically similar.
Thankfully, I’ve another one I can add to that short list: 2020’s The Block Island Sound definitely explores territory not all that unlike the stomping grounds that Mulder and Scully traveled.
In fact, I’d argue that it’s the kind of wraparound tale that those agents would most likely have been called in on after bureaucracies like Homeland Security and the Coast Guard came up short in explaining aware the curiosities. Written and directed for the screen by the McManus Brothers of Kevin and Matthew, it’s a story that blends a few genres – much like X’s best hours did so well – while giving watchers some interesting circumstances played out by impressive talent, so much so that this is an easy ‘thumbs up’ recommendation right at the front of my review. However, its pacing and the lack of any real closure might have some only giving it a cursory once over then heading back to TV syndication for X-Files reruns in order to digest the real thing.
(NOTE: The following review will contain minor spoilers necessary solely for the discussion of plot and/or characters. If you’re the type of reader who prefers a review entirely spoiler-free, then I’d encourage you to skip down to the last few paragraphs for the final assessment. If, however, you’re accepting of a few modest hints at ‘things to come,’ then read on …)
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“Something lurks off the coast of Block Island, silently influencing the behavior of fisherman, Tom Lynch. After suffering a series of violent outbursts, he unknowingly puts his family in grave danger.”
Even a cursory reading into the phenomenon of alien abduction will produce a small list of similarities that abductees experience around the world. Most cases will touch on telepathic communication – sometimes so severe it borders on outright manipulation – along with a prospect of blackouts and/or missing time. While some might strongly believe that they have been experimented on medically, there may not be any compelling physical evidence to support such a claim. In some of the more involved instances, the kidnapped might even acknowledge that other members of the family have also been seized previously. But most – if not the vast majority – return with little to no recall to what precisely happened in their time away, and it’s only through hypnotic regression that they can piece together a possible sequence of events, one usually a dark and confusing affair that escapes understanding.
It's this kind of experience that is at the heart of The Block Island Sound.
Tom (played by Neville Archambault) has been hearing things – voices and otherwise guttural sounds – on his boat while out fishing on the ocean. These noises have somehow activated a past tendency to sleepwalk; and – even while seemingly fully awake – he’s become prone to seizing up, staring into nothingness, while life goes on normally all around him. Though he can’t explain it, there’s a sense as if he’s been ordered to do something – to bring something with him – on his trips out onto the sea; but if he does he never returns with it nor can explain what happened to that which he brought along.
Harry (Chris Sheffield) – Tom’s son – has done the best he can in caring for his old man. While he’s aware of his father’s curious mental state, he’s been unable to convince him that he needs serious medical treatment to treat whatever psychological issue may be affecting his judgment. Harry has even kept Tom’s cognitive decline a secret from his sister Audry (Michaela McManus), but she instantly recognizes that their family elder is far from himself when she arrives back home for a brief stay involving a work assignment involving her job with the Environmental Protection Agency. As fate would have it, schools and schools of dead fish are washing up along the shore; and she begins to wonder if there could be some loose connection between that event and the lapses her father is experiencing.
From the film’s IMDB.com page citation:
“Something lurks off the coast of Block Island, silently influencing the behavior of fisherman, Tom Lynch. After suffering a series of violent outbursts, he unknowingly puts his family in grave danger.”
Even a cursory reading into the phenomenon of alien abduction will produce a small list of similarities that abductees experience around the world. Most cases will touch on telepathic communication – sometimes so severe it borders on outright manipulation – along with a prospect of blackouts and/or missing time. While some might strongly believe that they have been experimented on medically, there may not be any compelling physical evidence to support such a claim. In some of the more involved instances, the kidnapped might even acknowledge that other members of the family have also been seized previously. But most – if not the vast majority – return with little to no recall to what precisely happened in their time away, and it’s only through hypnotic regression that they can piece together a possible sequence of events, one usually a dark and confusing affair that escapes understanding.
It's this kind of experience that is at the heart of The Block Island Sound.
Tom (played by Neville Archambault) has been hearing things – voices and otherwise guttural sounds – on his boat while out fishing on the ocean. These noises have somehow activated a past tendency to sleepwalk; and – even while seemingly fully awake – he’s become prone to seizing up, staring into nothingness, while life goes on normally all around him. Though he can’t explain it, there’s a sense as if he’s been ordered to do something – to bring something with him – on his trips out onto the sea; but if he does he never returns with it nor can explain what happened to that which he brought along.
Harry (Chris Sheffield) – Tom’s son – has done the best he can in caring for his old man. While he’s aware of his father’s curious mental state, he’s been unable to convince him that he needs serious medical treatment to treat whatever psychological issue may be affecting his judgment. Harry has even kept Tom’s cognitive decline a secret from his sister Audry (Michaela McManus), but she instantly recognizes that their family elder is far from himself when she arrives back home for a brief stay involving a work assignment involving her job with the Environmental Protection Agency. As fate would have it, schools and schools of dead fish are washing up along the shore; and she begins to wonder if there could be some loose connection between that event and the lapses her father is experiencing.
Without divulging too much of the narrative magic that makes the film work, Block Island Sound posits that our existence in nature might be vastly more complex than what we perceive.
Similar to our scientists experimenting with wildlife on land and in water to better understand what effects we might have upon them, someone might be doing the same to us, resulting in any number of reported phenomena from alien abduction, spirit possession, or ghost sightings. Could we be little more than fish to the beings who reside higher up the food chain than we do? Like we pluck them from the water, might these omnipotent overlords be doing the same to us? While this supposition isn’t all that fresh and/or new, directors Kevin and Matthew McManus frame their spectral procedural against the backdrop of a family who might be dealing with little more than an expansive case of dementia or Alzheimer's; and the structure works winning thanks to the work of an impressive cast.
One of the problems the film encounters, however, is some muddled pacing in transferring the bulk of the story between father and son. About the time that Tom’s mental predicament grows untenable, he suddenly vanishes seemingly from the face of the Earth only to show up dead – bruised and battered nearly beyond recognition – after a brief absence. With this development, Harry becomes obsessed with finding out what truly went wrong – he no longer believes that his father was the victim of the loss of mental acuity tied to aging – and in the process of conducting his own primitive investigation he, too, begins showing signs of the same psychological malady. Abruptly, he’s hearing the same voices and sounds that his father did; and he’s freezing up, unable to move and/or process his surroundings. It doesn’t take long for Audry to suspect that her brother may’ve inherited the same active gene that was slowly destroying her father; and she, too, begins to look into these changes, perhaps wondering if she might be next.
It's this gradual shift in focus from the father to the son (then, lightly, to the daughter) that forces Sound to lose a bit of its footing with the film never feeling quite as assured as it did with Tom. Some of this is likely owed to the choice that the viewers were truly meant to discover these events alongside Harry – initially, the young man is offered up as a kind of everyman for which watchers to identify with and follow along – but it isn’t as seamless as one could hope. Personally, I think the McManus Brothers – in writing and directing the feature – may have erred into giving viewers as close as experience as possible as they did under Tom: refraining from some of those sharing some of the earlier spooky sounds might’ve kept audiences guessing about the old man’s condition, letting it all be new under his son’s perceptions. Thus, holding back some of the spectral occurrences would’ve elevated Harry’s discoveries, giving them more narrative strength. Still, that doesn’t happen here, and it hurts.
Also, I think the directors’ erred in allowing a pivotal speech by Audry to be used as a voiceover in the film’s closing segment. Clearly, the storytellers wanted to leave their audience with a stronger suggestion as to what was really happening out there on ‘the Sound’ (a specific area of the ocean tied to these proceedings); and, yet, those of us who go into these projects watching closely had likely already surmised that Tom, Harry, and inevitably Audry were little more than test subjects for some cruel God-like entity exploring whatever science it was most interested with. Though I can understand and appreciate what the McManuses were likely going for, I personally felt is was more than a bit intellectually unnecessary.
Similar to our scientists experimenting with wildlife on land and in water to better understand what effects we might have upon them, someone might be doing the same to us, resulting in any number of reported phenomena from alien abduction, spirit possession, or ghost sightings. Could we be little more than fish to the beings who reside higher up the food chain than we do? Like we pluck them from the water, might these omnipotent overlords be doing the same to us? While this supposition isn’t all that fresh and/or new, directors Kevin and Matthew McManus frame their spectral procedural against the backdrop of a family who might be dealing with little more than an expansive case of dementia or Alzheimer's; and the structure works winning thanks to the work of an impressive cast.
One of the problems the film encounters, however, is some muddled pacing in transferring the bulk of the story between father and son. About the time that Tom’s mental predicament grows untenable, he suddenly vanishes seemingly from the face of the Earth only to show up dead – bruised and battered nearly beyond recognition – after a brief absence. With this development, Harry becomes obsessed with finding out what truly went wrong – he no longer believes that his father was the victim of the loss of mental acuity tied to aging – and in the process of conducting his own primitive investigation he, too, begins showing signs of the same psychological malady. Abruptly, he’s hearing the same voices and sounds that his father did; and he’s freezing up, unable to move and/or process his surroundings. It doesn’t take long for Audry to suspect that her brother may’ve inherited the same active gene that was slowly destroying her father; and she, too, begins to look into these changes, perhaps wondering if she might be next.
It's this gradual shift in focus from the father to the son (then, lightly, to the daughter) that forces Sound to lose a bit of its footing with the film never feeling quite as assured as it did with Tom. Some of this is likely owed to the choice that the viewers were truly meant to discover these events alongside Harry – initially, the young man is offered up as a kind of everyman for which watchers to identify with and follow along – but it isn’t as seamless as one could hope. Personally, I think the McManus Brothers – in writing and directing the feature – may have erred into giving viewers as close as experience as possible as they did under Tom: refraining from some of those sharing some of the earlier spooky sounds might’ve kept audiences guessing about the old man’s condition, letting it all be new under his son’s perceptions. Thus, holding back some of the spectral occurrences would’ve elevated Harry’s discoveries, giving them more narrative strength. Still, that doesn’t happen here, and it hurts.
Also, I think the directors’ erred in allowing a pivotal speech by Audry to be used as a voiceover in the film’s closing segment. Clearly, the storytellers wanted to leave their audience with a stronger suggestion as to what was really happening out there on ‘the Sound’ (a specific area of the ocean tied to these proceedings); and, yet, those of us who go into these projects watching closely had likely already surmised that Tom, Harry, and inevitably Audry were little more than test subjects for some cruel God-like entity exploring whatever science it was most interested with. Though I can understand and appreciate what the McManuses were likely going for, I personally felt is was more than a bit intellectually unnecessary.
Diff’rent strokes, diff’rent folks.
Still, it’s easy to see that everyone in the cast showed up and delivered on the premise of the ideas and their respective scenes, of which several really only enjoyed small moments. The spine of any good yarn is that its players remain both relatable and sympathetic; and – on that count alone – Sound succeeds. Because these smaller humanistic moments resonate as well as they do, it’s equally easy to invest in the extraordinary material, regardless of whether this was all the dark business of demons, gods, or aliens. I felt for the family – as well as those around them – and my investment had me hoping for a happier ending or, at least, happier times. That doesn’t always happen – certainly not in genre entertainment – so hats off to all involved.
The Block Island Sound (2020) was produced by 30 Bones Cinema, Hood River Entertainment, Captain Intertia Productions, Title Media, 79th & Broadway Entertainment. DVD distribution (for this particular release) has been coordinated by the fine folks at Synapse Films. As for the technical specifications? While I’m no trained video expert, I found the provided sights-and-sounds to be excellent from start to finish; there are a few effects sequences a bit undercooked, but this is guerilla filmmaking – meaning reasonably low budget – so it works just fine. Lastly, if you’re looking for special features? The disc boasts a directors’ commentary along with a few making-of shorts that should be enough to keep serious fans interested. A good assortment.
Recommended.
While billed chiefly as a Horror, The Block Island Sound oft times feels vastly a bit more like a supernatural Mystery, one that incorporates elements from Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy in order to weave its moody spell as effectively as it does. Like a good episode of The X-Files (but without those intrepid FBI Special Agents), Sound posits a premise potentially otherworldly yet one grounded in a possible real-world scientific solution; and – for the most part – it allows its viewers to make up their own mind about it as it goes. Sadly, the McManus Brothers kinda/sorta cheapen the brew in the last reel, hamstringing their resolution with a voiceover with a bland yet suggestive paint-by-number solution anyone watching closely should’ve seen coming. Worthwhile with some great performances, it may not possess great rewatchability, but … the truth is out there, my friends.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at Synapse Films provided me with a complimentary 4K UltraHD Blu-ray of The Block Island Sound (2020) by request for the expressed purpose of completing this review. Their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.
-- EZ
Still, it’s easy to see that everyone in the cast showed up and delivered on the premise of the ideas and their respective scenes, of which several really only enjoyed small moments. The spine of any good yarn is that its players remain both relatable and sympathetic; and – on that count alone – Sound succeeds. Because these smaller humanistic moments resonate as well as they do, it’s equally easy to invest in the extraordinary material, regardless of whether this was all the dark business of demons, gods, or aliens. I felt for the family – as well as those around them – and my investment had me hoping for a happier ending or, at least, happier times. That doesn’t always happen – certainly not in genre entertainment – so hats off to all involved.
The Block Island Sound (2020) was produced by 30 Bones Cinema, Hood River Entertainment, Captain Intertia Productions, Title Media, 79th & Broadway Entertainment. DVD distribution (for this particular release) has been coordinated by the fine folks at Synapse Films. As for the technical specifications? While I’m no trained video expert, I found the provided sights-and-sounds to be excellent from start to finish; there are a few effects sequences a bit undercooked, but this is guerilla filmmaking – meaning reasonably low budget – so it works just fine. Lastly, if you’re looking for special features? The disc boasts a directors’ commentary along with a few making-of shorts that should be enough to keep serious fans interested. A good assortment.
Recommended.
While billed chiefly as a Horror, The Block Island Sound oft times feels vastly a bit more like a supernatural Mystery, one that incorporates elements from Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy in order to weave its moody spell as effectively as it does. Like a good episode of The X-Files (but without those intrepid FBI Special Agents), Sound posits a premise potentially otherworldly yet one grounded in a possible real-world scientific solution; and – for the most part – it allows its viewers to make up their own mind about it as it goes. Sadly, the McManus Brothers kinda/sorta cheapen the brew in the last reel, hamstringing their resolution with a voiceover with a bland yet suggestive paint-by-number solution anyone watching closely should’ve seen coming. Worthwhile with some great performances, it may not possess great rewatchability, but … the truth is out there, my friends.
In the interests of fairness, I’m pleased to disclose that the fine folks at Synapse Films provided me with a complimentary 4K UltraHD Blu-ray of The Block Island Sound (2020) by request for the expressed purpose of completing this review. Their contribution to me in no way, shape, or form influenced my opinion of it.
-- EZ
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