The Block Island Sound Review (Film, 2021)
content warning: gore, animal cruelty, child endangerment, alcohol abuse
Editorial Note: The film is predicated on the idea that some species of animals use toxins to destroy their prey. That means there are a lot of dead animals pictured in the film, including massive amounts of dead fish and birds hitting windshields. This is obviously simulated footage, but it can be upsetting. -RG
Something is wrong on Block Island. This summer tourism and fishing town is facing an inexplicable wave of irregular animal behavior, including thousands of dead fish washing up shore. Audry is tasked with researching the cause. She returns to her childhood home with her daughter, putting her face to face with the unexpected dangers of the Island.
Meanwhile, her brother Harry never left the island. He stayed behind to take care of their father. He’s one of the only ones to notice something is wrong with the Island and the people on it even before his father goes missing.
Writers/directors Kevin and Matthew McManus hit on a bleak, haunted tone in The Block Island Sound. The sense of dread is inescapable. You know to be afraid from the first moments of the film. Any moment of levity is too brief to offer any real relief.
Block Island is a place where something is wrong. The story starts right after the summer tourists have left. An island that can house thousands is kept afloat by a fraction of that. The isolation does a number on the collective psyche of the town, causing a constant state of distrust and misery.
The biggest issue with The Block Island Sound is the sense of scope. There are a lot of disconnected plot threads that are kept separate from each other. It’s a storytelling device to create mystery. The result can feel disjointed.
Kevin and Matthew McManus’ biggest project before The Block Island Sound was the Netflix original series American Vandal. They were producers and writers on the show. They know how to plot for longer form narratives and do it well. The pair even received an Emmy nomination for writing the season one finale of the series.
The Block Island Sound feels like a mini-series reduced to a feature length running time. They could easily spread out this film over multiple episodes and it would still feel tense and terrifying. Smashed together in an hour and forty minutes, the story feels like it’s bouncing around between a lot of ideas.
This is a scary film. Part of that fear comes from a growing sense of the unknown. Every time you get close to finding something out, the story jumps to another scary idea that never fully gets addressed. This can terrify in small doses, but dulls in effectiveness as they introduce more without resolution.
The Block Island Sound is streaming on Netflix.
