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31 Days of Halloween: The Corridor

I regret that I was in the wrong mood for The Corridor tonight. I really do, because I can tell that it's probably a movie I'd have engaged with on a philosophical level, if only I'd been less used up. Today has been a rough day; not at all a bad day, but there's been a lot going on and I'm just wiped.

But, I'm committed to this damn project, and I'm gonna trudge ahead.

The Corridor takes place during a weekend of male bonding. Five friends are spending the weekend in a remote cabin in the woods. Tyler has had a rough few months; the movie opened with him staring out of the slats in a closet door at the body of his deceased mother. When his friends break in to offer help, he babbles incoherently and stabs two of them. It's not quite the same setting as Hot Tub Time Machine, but it's close. The other four friends are throwing this weekend bash to offer Tyler some support and get him back on his feet. The stabbing victims have recovered but their relationship is a little strained.

The weekend begins more or less as expected. These guys haven't seen much of each other since high school, and now somewhere in their 20s they are at different stages of adulthood: careers, kids, burgeoning alcoholism. The cabin was the scene of some good times in their younger days, but it's been years and having moved on, it's hard to get back into their particular collective groove. Male bonding becomes gentle ribbing becomes one-upmanship becomes harsh criticism of each other's lifestyle.

Feeling ostracised and self-conscious, Tyler takes a walk in the woods and comes upon what he later describes to the group as a "corridor"; a space where everything looks and feels slightly different. We'll have to take his word for it that this is cool and unsettling; it just looks like a Snapchat filter to me.

He brings one friend out to experience the corridor, and once it's clear that he's not planning another stabbing, the other friends come out of their hiding places to share the experience (see? One stabbing—okay, two stabbings, and suddenly nobody trusts you). Upon developing identical nosebleeds, they return to the cabin (well, except for the abusive, alcoholic musician, who wants to keep watch over the space).

Over the next few hours, things get weird in a metaphysical, science fiction way which eventually leads to murder.

I watched The Corridor on the recommendation of a now-disappeared movie blog, and the fact that I ran into a reference to it again recently which described it as "The Big Chill meets Donnie Darko", which is both intriguing and not off the mark. But as I said, I just wasn't in the mood, and so I think I failed The Corridor, not the other way around.

Sometime I'll have to give it another shot. Tonight, though, it's early bed. I'm beat.

Addendum: By the way, everybody seems to have a different idea as to when this movie was released. Some sources say 2010, others say 2011, still others say 2012. C'mon, guys. Get your act together.