Look at that. Brand new blog series and I’m already coming in a few hours late. Ask Michelle sometime how much of a pain in the ass my time management skills can be.

Anyway, we’re talking one of the most recent Tubi Original releases, Black Mold; written and directed by John Pata, and starring Agnes Albright, Andrew Bailes, Jeremy Holm, and Caito Aase. This one is brought to us by Raven Banner Entertainment, who have an excellent reputation for quality indie genre films (Brooklyn 45, anyone?).

Let’s just do this how we do it on the show, yeah? The IMDB description for this one isn’t problematic with spoilers, so here it is: “While exploring a decrepit and abandoned facility, an auspicious photographer faces off against her traumatic past.” By the way, I’m 43 and pretty good with words, and I still had to look up auspicious, so don’t feel bad if you did, too.

Next we do spoiler-free thoughts, right? Black Mold is a movie where I enjoyed the story more than the storytelling, if that make sense. There were some really interesting ideas here, as well as some effectively grotesque special effects, but I never felt any real sense of tension because the characters and their quandaries didn’t connect with me. I watched it twice just to be sure, and I don’t mind that I watched it twice, but I don’t know that I would ever watch it again on purpose. It’s a well made film, with some especially stellar cinematography courtesy of Robert Patrick Stern (Brooklyn 45, anyone?). It just never fully connected with me the way I needed. 3/5 Skulls.

Things get pretty spoiler heavy from here, so if you want to see the film unspoiled, stop reading now and come back when you’re done. For those still here or returning, we’ll start with the semi-detailed plot recap, and cut me some slack if it’s not as fun as when Michelle does it.

*deep breath*

Brooke (Albright) and Tanner (Bailes) are artsy photographers who like to shoot artsy photos of old, abandoned buildings in the middle of nowhere, including the interiors, which involves a lot of trespassing and some breaking and entering. That’s what they’re doing this fateful day, with their friend CJ (Aase) dropping them off and picking them up, so as to not leave the vehicle at the scene of the crime while the crime is still in progress. Smart. They visit a couple of places and have a couple of spooky/scary moments that lead to some basic backgrounding and character development. Then they go to Franklin Hill. What is Franklin Hill? They don’t even know. Some kind of government related research or testing facility is the rumor, but they don’t know anything for sure except they want to take pictures of it. But, oh shit, turns out Franklin Hill WAS some kind of research or testing facility, and they were working on some kind of biological fear weapon that at some point went horribly wrong, leading to the place being locked down and abandoned, but also completely contaminated with this stuff. They bump into a squatter the credits conspicuously name The Man Upstairs (Holm) who has been living there a while, also clearly oblivious to the fear fungus or whatever, on account of how he’s gone completely paranoid crazy about THEM. Who is THEM? No idea, doesn’t matter, they aren’t real. He attacks Brooke and Tanner, knocking them unconscious. When they wake up, shit goes crazy because they’re all infected with whatever this microbial terror is, and having crazed hallucinations about their worst fears. For Tanner, that is scarecrows and werewolves. For the Man Upstairs, it’s THEM. For Brooke, it’s how she blames herself for her dad Lukas (also Holm) killing himself, and she starts to think the Man Upstairs is her dead dead, only not dead. Stuff happens, or maybe it doesn’t and we just think it did. It’s that sort of trip. Some scarecrows come to life and try to kill Tanner. The reanimated corpse of Brooke’s dad digs some of his own brains out of his exploded skull, and then turns into a rotten zombie man. It’s all crazy, but also makes sense if you’re paying attention. The big finish is that it turns out the Man Upstairs killed CJ, who came back while Brooke and Tanner were unconscious; Tanner kills the Man Upstairs because he hallucinates the Man Upstairs turning into a werewolf; and Brooke kills Tanner because she thinks he is trying to kill her, because her dad’s maybe real ghost said something about a first taste of blood. And what happened to Brooke? Well, she maybe somehow got out, went home, printed her pictures, and had her big deal art exhibition like nothing ever happened, like nobody ever asked what happened to Tanner and CJ. Or maybe that was just another paranoid black mold hallucination. And we’ll never know for sure which. The end.

So, what I enjoyed the most about Black Mold, as I mentioned, is the story itself. I love this idea of not just accidentally stumbling upon a crazy experiment gone wrong, but also never knowing what is going on and just experiencing the effects of it; like getting dosed with acid without your knowledge. I say “never knowing” because that whole part about how Franklin Hill really was a research facility working on a biological fear weapon is never explicitly spelled out in the film, but you are absolutely given enough information to know what is going on, and in a very unambiguous way. The film shows the audience things it does not show the characters. They never become aware at any time that they are under the influence of whatever this stuff is, let alone try to figure out what it is and how to fix it. I thought it was a very deft bit of storytelling to make sure the audience knew exactly what was happening without the characters ever knowing.

Unfortunately, the details of the screenplay didn’t connect with me. I don’t want to seem like I am disparaging anyone’s efforts, but a major issue is that the dialogue didn’t feel natural to me, which lead to the performances feeling unnatural as well, and I just couldn’t get around it. There are also a few things that don’t happen that immediately make me wonder, “but why?” The Man Upstairs doesn’t go to the window to see for himself when Brooke hallucinates that CJ just arrived, and doesn’t try to stop them from leaving, even though he knows she is dead because he killed her. And for that matter, why is he called the Man Upstairs? We know that Brooke blames herself for her dad’s suicide, but we never, ever know why. The woman from the funeral who blamed her, who the hell was that? They opened doors that were never closed, and it left me rather unsatisfied. This is a rare moment where I think the film could have used another 15-20 minutes.

Black Mold won the Best Cinematography award at the 2023 Portland Horror Festival, and for good reason. The film is beautiful, with some really effective steadicam work, and some framing that reminded me a lot of Mike Flanagan. This felt very Flanagan-influenced in several ways, really, and that’s no bad thing. It really did make very effective use of its special effects, saving them for key moments to get maximum impact. There are even some moments of comic relief from Tanner that I found super effective. Plenty to enjoy, and certainly many of you will do so far more than I did. I mean, it won Best Indie Feature at 2023 PanicFest, so what do I know?