The Block Island Sound

The Block Island Sound has a whole bunch of style and an intriguing central mystery, and for a while, that’s enough. About the strange happenings in a small fishing community, including dead animals turning up in droves and a man whose father starts acting increasingly erratic, the film is actually quite compelling for the first little while. A lot of this can be attributed to the stylish direction from directors Kevin and Matthew McManus, who do a great job of establishing a nice atmosphere of tension and dread. But the mystery effectively stagnates in the middle section of the film; the movie keeps drawing it out and drawing it out and drawing it out without giving us much new to chew on, and what initially seems so fascinating eventually becomes tedious. Things pick up with a thoroughly WTF-inducing conclusion, but it’s not quite enough to redeem the film.

** out of ****