The idea might cover old ground – guy moves into haunted house and goes mad – but writer- director Ivan Kavanagh uses this only to further investigate the theme of mental illness that he explored in his stirring 2009 drama The Fading Light. That’s not to say he doesn’t throw in some genuinely jumpy moments though.
Film archivist David (Evans) and wife Alice (Hoekstra) move into a fixer-upper in Dublin, a beautiful Georgian home that may have been the scene of a grisly murder in 1902 when a husband massacred his wife, child and nanny. When David witnesses Alice in the throes of passion with another man he suffers a psychotic break, witnessing a dark figure – the same one he’s beginning to see in the shadowy corners of his new home - throw a woman into the canal. When his wife disappears, the increasingly twitchy David is questioned by Detective McNamara (Oram) and even David begins to suspect that he may be responsible…
If recent spooker The Babadook was, behind the creepy tension and the monster, a study in depression, then The Canal is really about the dark side of male sexual insecurity. It’s only after witnessing his wife in sexual abandon that David’s fragile mind fractures and events turn disturbing. Watching his dangerous and misguided attempts to claw some sexual confidence back – through his relationship with nanny Sophie (an impressive Kelly Byrne) and colleague Claire (the always dependable Antonia Campbell-Hughes) - resulting in only further dehumanising him is by far and away the most interesting aspect of this horror.
More a psychological horror along the lines of Ciarán Foy’s Citadel, The Canal is one that slowly cranks up the tension, keeping the audience guessing as to the stability of David’s mind and whether or not he’s guilty. But Kavanagh isn’t shy about jolting the audience with good old fashioned boo moments either and one creepy encounter in a canal tunnel will surely induce a few nightmares.
There are some bum notes. David’s mother-in-law mentioning how her daughter’s lover has been devastated since the death at her wake isn’t believable, and Evans could wear the effects of his mental breakdown on his face a little more – at one point he isn’t nearly as distressed as he should be after one particularly traumatic experience.
Solid stuff.
