Charlotte Stickles, Chris Galust, Dylan McTee, Germain Arroyo, horror, Kellen Raffaelo, Laura Benanti, Mariel Molino, Michael Boatman, movies, reviews, Robert Marsella, Sam Duncan, The Shade, Tyler Chipman
September 25, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Tyler Chipman
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the horror film “The Shade” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few Latin people and African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A 20-year-old man, who witnessed his father’s suicide when he was a child, is haunted by visions of harpy.
Culture Audience: “The Shade” will appeal mainly to people who don’t mind watching slow-paced horror movies that leave too many questions unanswered.
“The Shade” is the equivalent of a vehicle that runs out of power and gets stuck in the mud. This repetitive horror movie fails to answer crucial questions in this gloomy story about a young man haunted by a harpy. The technical aspects of “The Shade”—such as the movie’s cinematography, makeup and visual effects—are competent in creating an eerie atmosphere. The acting performances are average but watchable. It’s too bad that “The Shade” wastes its story potential by over-relying on the same “scare tactics” and not doing enough to explain why major things in the movie happened.
Written and directed by Tyler Chipman, “The Shade” takes place in an unnamed U.S. city. The movie was actually filmed in Massachusetts. The protagonist of “The Shade” is 20-year-old Ryan Beckman (played by Chris Galust), who is haunted by witnessing his father’s suicide when Ryan was a child of about 7 or 8 years old. The movie opens with Ryan having a nightmare about this suicide.
In the nightmare, Ryan as a child (played by Kellen Raffaelo) is driven to a graveyard at night by his father Randall “Randy” Beckman (played by Robert Marsella), who sets fires to a particular grave headstone. On the headstone is Randall’s name. His birth year listed as 1969, and his death year is listed as 2021. After setting fire to the grave, Randall shoots himself while a horrified Ryan watches.
The adult Ryan has anxiety issues and has been prescribed unnamed medication that he is reluctant to take, but he self-medicates by smoking a lot of marijuana. Ryan is also in therapy. His therapist is Dr. Derick Huston (played by Michael Boatman), who is compassionate and understanding. These therapy sessions don’t amount to much except Ryan telling Dr. Huston that he has trouble sleeping because of nightmares.
Ryan lives with his mother Renee Beckman (played by Laura Benanti) and his 9-year-old brother James “Jamie” Beckman (played by Sam Duncan), who likes to play video games with Ryan. Jamie and Ryan have an older brother named Jason (played by Dylan McTee), who is just as mopey and moody as Ryan, but Jason has a nasty temper and is quick to get violent.
Early on in the movie, Jason moves back into the family household because he has left college. Ryan is annoyed because no one in the family wants to say why Jason left college. One night, Jason is playing heavy metal music loudly in his room. When Ryan goes to the room to tell Jason to turn down the volume, he sees a harpy (played by Charlotte Stickles) hiding in the room. No one believes Ryan.
Ryan is a college student who has two part-time jobs: a pizza maker/delivery person at a pizza place and an apprentice at a tattoo shop, a place where he hopes to eventually work full-time. Ryan has a devoted and loving girlfriend name Alejandra, nicknamed Alex (played by Mariel Molino), whose sassy gay cousin Nicolas Silva (played by Germain Arroyo) is Ryan’s best friend. Nicholas is also Ryan’s college classmate and co-worker at the pizza place.
“The Shade” is nothing but Ryan repeatedly seeing the harpy, in between long, dull stretches of this 127-minute movie. At first, Ryan thinks he’s the only person who can see the harpy, but he eventually finds out that other people can see the harpy too. The harpy is supposed to represent grief, but “The Shade” can’t decide if it wants to be a horror movie or a psychological drama about grief that affects an entire family. Don’t expect to get any answers about why Randall “Randy” Beckman committed suicide. Worst of all is the ending of “The Shade,” which is a complete letdown after doing a shoddy job of building any suspense or answering vital questions.
Level 33 Entertainment released “The Shade” in U.S. cinemas on September 20, 2024.