In THE KING TIDE (2023), a desperate community of island fishermen discover an infant with a magical power of healing, resulting in the community forming a virtual religion around the girl and becoming willing to do anything to protect and ensure their access to her powers. The filmmakers wring a ton of drama from a simple story and modest budget, with a terrific payoff.
Distraught after his wife Grace suffers another miscarriage, Bobby takes a walk and hears a baby crying near the sea. Discovering a lost infant, he and his wife adopt the girl, though she is no normal child. Named Isla, she has the ability to heal almost any ailment and keep people young. Years later, the island has sealed itself off and has formed a virtual cult around her. But Isla has another power, one that is darker than healing, and when the girl grows confused and appears to lose all her power, the community falls into chaos, turning on each other and outsiders.
It’s a simple premise and story, the kind of thing you might find in a Shirley Jackson short story or a play turned into a film, but the filmmakers mine a huge amount of drama and tragedy out of it. As things go wrong, everyone becomes an antagonist, and what makes these characters so great is every one of them has a powerful motivation for what they want and what they’re willing to do for it. The town’s now useless medic, for example, believes the community is exploiting Isla and wants her to have more choice. Her adoptive parents want to protect her, and their mother, cured of a catatonic form of dementia, is willing to do anything to avoid going back into that horrible fog. And on and on, all of it leading up to tragedy with a terrific ending. The real monster, it seems, is simple human nature.
Otherwise, the setting is notably bleak, an isolated community on an island in Nova Scotia where the houses are barely resisting the erosion of time and the harsh elements. The people who live there are ordinary people similarly turned rugged and hard by their environment. The pacing is solid and the dialogue just fine.
Overall, I was impressed by THE KING TIDE and would happily recommend it as a simple horror story about human nature that is well told.
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