Mickey Keating is a very competent indie horror director. I’ve seen all but one of his features (reviewed a couple too) and enjoyed them all. He has a good eye for setting tense scenes and his characters always feel authentic even when they are losing their minds. When choosing my 12th film for this year’s 31 horror movies in 31 days, I came across Offseason and almost skipped over it. Not because I wasn’t interested in what Keating put out, but because I thought that I’d already seen it. But it didn’t ring any bells when I caught a glimpse of the plot synopsis though. Huh? Turns out, I had it confused with his Carnage Park for some reason. Don’t ask me why. The titles aren’t similar. Neither are the plots. Good thing I paid attention while scrolling through the thumbnails on Shudder! Otherwise, I would have missed this one. Let’s get into it, shall we?
Marie receives a letter from her mother’s island hometown asking her to come immediately to address the destruction of her mother’s headstone. It may sound weird to accept a request like that, but Marie has already been trying to get answers to why her mother was returned to her hometown to be buried in the first place. While her mother was dying, she told her over and over that she would never go back and to not let them bury her there. But her will seems to have been changed to specifically request returning to the island and there was nothing the law could do about it. So, Marie and her husband arrive at the island just as the bridge man is closing the only route in or out for the season. He says she’ll have to be quick or they’ll be stuck there until the spring. Not only does the couple get stuck there, but they also learn that the islanders are all creepy weirdos who seem to be collectively possessed or something! She will have to dig deep to find out what is going on and how to survive this place.
Keating has given us the Silent Hill movie that we (well, some of us) hoped to get when we first learned that the videogame was being adapted into a feature film. We get a creepy, isolated town. We get a pervasive mist. We get townsfolk who all seem to be a part of the sinister events our protagonist experiences. And we get a character trying to understand her own connection to this damned place. The only things we are missing are the roving monsters and the confounding puzzles. Keating often wears his influences on his sleeve, and this film is no exception. Besides Silent Hill, we get a little Dead & Buried, a little The Wicker Man, and even some Dagon. In this case, unlike some films, these influences aren’t cribbed from directly. Keating has delivered a loving pastiche that keeps the audience engaged and uneasy while also feeling unique but familiar. We can’t really ask for much more from our indie horror, can we?
The Final Cut: Offseason is a loving homage to isolated town horror stories. It expertly delivers an eerie mystery while avoiding triteness.
No Real Danger 