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George Bell reviews The Corridor

Evan Kelly had better keep making horror movies, because if his debut, The Corridor, is any indication,
he has the ability to invest me in characters with a very simple premise. The Corridor is about a group
of guys who gather at a remote cabin in the woods to rekindle old friendships. One of them, Tyler, has
recently gone through a very traumatic family event where he injured a couple from the group, and
the friends’ bonding weekend is supposed to get him back into the swing of things as well as rebuild
everyone else’s trust around him. As you can probably guess, things don’t go quite as planned.

While out in the woods, Tyler stumbles into some kind of translucent wall of energy that causes
machinery to malfunction and even makes his nose bleed. Soon enough, he brings the rest of the gang
to check it out, and what begins as an exciting discovery eventually degrades into a full-on nightmare.
The energy wall soon encases the group inside it, and weird things start happening. For example, they
can hear each others’ whispers from 30 yards out, and they start having unexplainable good feelings. If
that doesn’t sound too bad, that’s because I’m only listing the initial positive effects. It gets a lot worse.

I never particularly liked any of the characters, which is usually a red flag for me. In this movie, however,
I was able to buy into their relationships thanks to great acting and believable situations. Half of the
group is comprised of dicks, and the other half are flawed, if not bad, people. The movie spends a
lot of time getting to know everyone and shows enough of the typical interactions between them
to sufficiently get me on board. Once they’ve been exposed to the “corridor,” though, their brains
essentially start short-circuiting. I’ll let you discover how, but I will say that not everyone ends up
needing the top part of their head. I didn’t know that was so expendable, but who am I to question such
things?

The one aspect I’m still unsure of my feelings toward is the ambiguous nature of everything. I’m all for
not being spoon-fed answers, but I typically don’t like it when a movie forgoes any and all explanations
as to what the hell is going on. Oddly enough, I wasn’t angry when this one was over. In fact, I have a
working theory that involves aliens, but I could be way off base. I bet you want to know why there are
aliens and scalpings going on, don’t you? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out. If you’re in the U.S.,
The Corridor is streaming on Netflix. It definitely gets a Good from me, non-explanations and all.

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