Mold (2022)

Directed by Michael Crum [Other horror films: Cypress Creek (2014), Anna (2017), Fall of Grace (2017), Lake Fear 3 (2018), Anna 2 (2019)]

To be frank, I was expecting far more from Mold than what I got.

Admittedly, that’s my fault. When I read about this movie on IMDb, I was sort of hoping for something like Splinter. I didn’t know that instead, it’d be a mix of body horror and monster movie, and unfortunately, neither of those sub-genres do much for me (especially the body horror aspect).

At first, though, things are okay. There’s some decent cinematography, interesting lighting at times, and some occasionally solid sequences. For instance, there’s a random softball scene that was solid (though it also didn’t tie into anything, as far as I could tell, and for a scene so dramatic, to not have it relate to anything else in the film, just felt bizarre beyond words).

Despite those positives, I couldn’t get into this past the first 25 minutes. Once the first mold monster pops up, I was outtie. See, there’s three main characters – one is sort of trapped in his apartment for a good portion of the film. The other two are trapped in another apartment. To add to the joy, these mold monsters (yes, there are multiple, and no, we never learn a thing about their origins) primarily hunt by hearing. They don’t seem to have sight, but they can hear with the best of them, so the characters don’t often speak.

And it was just awful. For large portions of the film, there was absolutely minimal dialogue, which, perhaps in better hands, could have been quite suspenseful, but personally speaking, I was bored out of my fucking mind. I was mentally gone by the end of this, and given that I thought the first twenty minutes really did have promise, it was a damn disappointment.

Oh, and along with large swaths being free of dialogue, the last two-thirds of the film had some dark scenes at times. It was sometimes hard to tell what was actually going on, and that didn’t do Mold any wonders either.

I don’t have much to say about the cast. My favorite character was played by R. Steven Blake – this guy didn’t get much screen-time, which is a tragedy, as his stereotypical gay persona was a lot of fun. Honestly, he was the one fun thing in the film, and he appears the least, which was #disappoint. Leads Gerald Crum (Anna, The Ouija Experiment 2: Theatre of Death, Blood Vow) and Shanon Snedden (Cypress Creek) did very little for me, though I thought they had potential, and I never cared for Harmini’s character. Harmini, on a side-note, seems to be a rapper from Texas, so if you’re curious as to why he just has the one name, well, there you go.

One thing I will admit to appreciating, aside from the few aspects I listed above, is that a public domain movie appears here, and it’s not Night of the Living Dead, which was a nice surprise. Instead, we get some action from The Screaming Skull, which is a movie that I swear I’ve seen around three times, but I’m not positive I’ve ever gotten through it without falling asleep. Still, it was nice to see a random public domain film like that utilized as opposed to more popular options.

More than anything, Mold was just tedious to get through. The large portions with minimal dialogue were tough to watch and keep focus on, and honestly, I just feel really disappointed about this one. It had promise, but it couldn’t do anything with it, at least in my opinion.

4/10