Set in the mid-nineties, Spiral tells of same-sex couple Aaron and Malik, who, along with Aaron’s teenaged daughter Kayla, move to a small town for a new life and a much-needed change of pace. Not long after they arrive, however, Malik begins to suspect that their neighbours are members of a strange cult with sinister intentions…
The plot of Spiral is very familiar – city-folk outsiders relocate to small rural town only to be ostracised, gaslighted, disbelieved and victimised by diabolical forces. However, with its gay protagonists and powerful social commentary, Spiral sets itself apart from similar films and unfolds as a moving, character-driven chiller. Director Kurtis David Harder builds tension and an uneasy atmosphere as Aaron (Ari Cohen) and Malik (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) meet their new neighbours and Malik gradually begins to suspect that something in town is not-quite-right. The neighbours appear welcoming enough, but subtle microaggressions and way too much smiling sets him on edge, as does Kayla’s (June Laporte) burgeoning relationship with local boy Tyler (Ty Wood). After someone breaks into their home, ransacks it and paints a homophobic slur on the wall of their living room, Malik begins a slow, spiralling descent into fear and paranoia, exhibiting strong signs of PTSD. Tension moves up a notch when he uncovers a pattern of murders that spans decades of the town’s history, always ten years apart, and the last victims were a lesbian couple and their family, but he can’t convince Aaron or Kayla that they are in danger.
The film is oftentimes at its most tense and uneasy when there’s nothing remotely supernatural afoot, just Malik going for a jog through the town only to encounter hostile stares from locals, and the unconscious bias he’s subjected to when new neighbour Tiffany assumes he is Aaron’s gardener. Indeed, some of the more supernatural aspects feel slightly clunky, particularly the ghostly encounter where Malik is handed a stack of VHS tapes by a tormented phantom. The screenplay by Colin Minihan and John Poliquin is initially ambiguous enough to suggest Malik could be an unreliable narrator, particularly when he suffers strange blackouts and time-lapses. Is it an effect of the strange plant his neighbours gave them? Or is he self-medicating? It's evident an old traumatic wound has been reopened. Glimpses of hooded figures standing silently and watching the house in the night suggest Malik is not completely paranoid. Bowyer-Chapman is a compelling lead, his powerful performance conveying Malik’s increasing isolation and desperation. It is disarming to see his character crumble as he is doubted and disbelieved by those he loves, and eventually even by himself, as he goes from exclaiming ‘Choosing to live your life loud and proud is about the bravest thing in this world’, to frantically warning Kayla ‘It’s not safe to be different, to stand out.’
The couple are marked as outsiders from the off, not only because they are new in town, but because they are gay – certainly the only openly gay couple in town. Malik is further othered because he is also Black, and there’s a suggestion that even his husband Aaron can’t fully understand Malik’s lived experience of prejudice and discrimination. While the Nineties marked a more accepting and progressive time, and advances in LGBT+ equality were being won, it was still a difficult time and homophobia was rife. Here in the UK, for example, Section 28 was still in effect. Education and social outlook was framed by this law, which prohibited councils and schools from “the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” Indeed, the backlash to the progression ushered in by Clinton in the US in the 90s, is present in the form of a radio broadcast in the scene where Malik realises the full extent of the situation he finds himself in as Pat Buchanan’s Concession speech to the Republican national convention can be heard: ‘The agenda that Clinton & Clinton would impose on America – abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat units – that’s change, all right. But it is not the kind of change America needs. It is not the kind of change America wants. And it is not the kind of change we can abide in a nation that we still call God’s country.’
It's against this backdrop that Malik is increasingly othered by the local community and begins to unravel. Through flashbacks to his teenage years, we see how he has been traumatised by a homophobic attack in which his boyfriend was murdered. Malik’s failing struggles to control his own narrative are also underpinned by his profession as a ghost writer, and even in his day job he is finds no respite from prejudice and hatred while working on a book about Charles Darrylson, a conservative figure possibly modelled on the likes of Joseph Nicolosi and other advocates of conversion therapy.
The powerful socio-political commentary that courses throughout Spiral remains as prescient today as it did back in the 1990s. Society’s fear of ‘difference’, of ‘the other’ reveals the horror of how easy it is to vilify and demonise vulnerable minorities. Be it LGBT+ people, immigrants, Muslims, the unemployed, the working class: those in power with a specific, conservative agenda, have always used minority groups as scapegoats, exploiting their perceived ‘difference’ to appeal to fear and ignorance. It’s happened throughout history, and it’s still happening today. Refugees and trans people are the current scourge of society, victims of ‘culture wars’ whipped up by tabloids and those in power with an agenda. When Malik’s neighbour tells him ‘Because of who you are, people won’t care, they’re afraid of you. Fear is human nature […] Tides change, there’ll be someone else to fear, there always is’, the full extent of the horror that has unfolded within the town, and will continue to unfold, is explicit and chilling to the core.
Spiral is an atmospheric, taut, and socially-conscious chiller, bolstered by powerful performances and a slow-burning tension that eventually ignites into a shocking denouement. While it unflinchingly exposes the horror of a society where it is dangerous for some people to simply exist, it also urges that - to paraphrase Harvey Milk - hope is never silent.