AFF Review: The Arbors

Seymour and Audrey II. Willard and Ben. Billy and the Gremlins. It’s the horror movie tradition of man-boys and their monsters. In The Arbors, lonely twenty-something Ethan (an appropriately gloomy Drew Matthews) encounters a dead deer one night on the road and espies a small spindly and toothy creature inside the animal’s corpse.

After transporting the carcass home, he nourishes the big bug with chunks of meat, and soon the critter demonstrates an appetite for something bigger as it—now grown into Alien-like proportions—dispatches one person after another in the rural community, some of whom Ethan believes have wronged him in some way. Regardless of whether those particular killings are coincidental or committed at Ethan’s unconscious bidding, he doesn’t attempt to stop the monster he nurtured and consequently becomes complicit in the slaughter.

It’s a fairly sophisticated (almost noirish) psychological narrative for the genre, and director Witmer does a fine job of maintaining a keen sense of anxiety in the film. As in most contemporary horror films, the devil is in the details and a few things don’t add up in The Arbors. Among other things, sidetrack subplots involving Ethan’s frayed relationship with an older brother and a non-existent one with an ex-girlfriend either need refinement or elimination altogether.

But that’s small stuff when considering other aspects of the film, such as the precisely executed scene in which Ethan witnesses a bloodbath in the abandoned childhood home where his monstrous accomplice symbiotically nests. As E.T. types in white decontamination suits are methodically slain by the creature, Ethan and the audience realize he’s safe from harm, which is a relief and yet the crux of Ethan’s dilemma. It’s a subline moment in a horror movie that’s both scary and smart.

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The Arbors

Dark Matters, Texas Premiere