They Reach (2020) Review
It’s 1979, and Jessica Daniels (Mary Madaline Roe), a 13-year-old science nerd, stumbles upon a possessed tape player and accidentally unleashes a demonic entity. She recruits her two best friends – Sam (Morgan Chandler) and Cheddar (Eden Campbell) to fight the beast before it devours more souls in the small town of Clarkston.
THEY REACH kicks off promisingly back in 1969. We see a father and son arrive at a house to tackle a possessed youngster in the basement. As a consequence of the chaotic events that then unfold the demon takes refuge in a tape player which remains out of sight for ten years. That is until a young girl – Jessica – discovers it in a junk box she happens upon in a local antiques shop. It’s not long before the tape player starts doing things that tape players are not supposed to do, such as appear to bleed at night, and Jessica’s neighbours are complaining about loud noise coming from the property that the occupants have no explanation for.
Writer/director Sylas Dall’s film may prove too talkative for some and too slow for others. I would have welcomed a bit more of a spark behind the central kid trio’s investigation, which instead drags the pacing down when it should be accelerating. As it is the film veers tonally between occasionally freaky bits, which happen too quickly, and talkative bits, which are too slow and lack the zest required to get the viewer properly hooked. I also found it odd how, with so much weirdness going on – Jessica’s mother is missing, her dad is locked up in a prison cell – that she isn’t placed under someone else’s care rather than allowed to be out and about with friends instead.
Also as much as I like Nineties comedy duo Jay and Silent Bob I wasn’t quite sure why a film set in the Seventies with a horror/comedy bent was feeling the need to reference the actors who play these two stoners in cult comedies. It feels misplaced. Admittedly THEY REACH is aimed at a younger demographic, with the likes of STEPHEN KING’S IT, MONSTER SQUAD and THE GOONIES cited as influences, however some scenes are too intense for the intended audience and quieter moments would lose the interest of a hardcore horror fan. On the plus side THEY REACH does capture the required nostalgia vibe by actually feel like it’s set in the very late Seventies and the performances and production values are solid.
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