Horror is a genre that’s often about referentialism and recycling tropes, the ultimate goal being the affirmation of their value by building off of them. Entire horror niches comprise a by-the-numbers blueprint with hard rules and guidelines. Take slashers: if you’ve watched one, you’ve watched ‘em all; you’re also watching for the rituals and traditions, and those are what will keep you coming back for more. But there’s custom, there’s homage, and then there’s cheap mimicry, and Scott Walker’s The Tank hits the third while aiming for the second. It’s Alien, and Aliens, and The Descent, and “The Host,” the second episode in The X-Files’ second season – and if all of that sounds great, brace for disappointment.
In 1978 Oregon, pet shop owners Ben (Matt Whelan) and Jules (Luciane Buchanan) are treading financial water. Out of the blue arrives a lawyer, Amos Tilbury (Mark Mitchinson), who informs Ben of a heretofore unknown sprawling coastal property left to him by his recently deceased mother. Ben packs up the car with Jules and their daughter Reia (Zara Nausbaum), heads out to the Beaver State’s farther reaches, and finds a house in disrepair with a monster lurking in the unsealed water tank built by Ben’s own dad 30 some odd years prior. Except maybe there are two monsters. Possibly three. After that, who’s keeping count?
Walker molds The Tank around menace and stalking more than a body count, so the film is cautious about revealing too much of what kind of slimy aberration dwells under the house. There’s another influence for you: Jaws, famous for holding back on shots of the shark, except Jaws’ restraint is a matter of Steven Spielberg making the best of unfortunate circumstances. Walker benches the monster to make the best of an iffy screenplay: If Ben, Jules, and Reia caught a full glimpse of the thing even 15 minutes sooner than they do, then the movie would run into a brick wall of complaints about the characters’ decision-making. Walker has to preserve mystery for their sake.
To an extent, it’s fun being scared from the same vantage point as Ben, Jules, and Reia, left to wonder if the bumps in the night and obscured shapes gliding in murky water are just harmless woodland critters. But it’s also fun to admire the creature suit filled out by Regina Hegemann, and fabricated by the fine folks at Weta Workshop, who used nature as their primary context for designing The Tank’s star abomination. Once Walker brings the film to its last act, where all pretense is abandoned and the monster is as much the centerpiece as his human actors, the plot ignites, and adrenaline kicks in. Unfortunately, The Tank’s take on the “creature” component of “creature feature” is so muscular in execution and performance that Walker’s slow-burn approach does his team’s efforts an unintended disservice.
There’s a secondary problem with his leisurely pacing, too: As the story ambles, his writing slackens by the minute. The movie imparts no sense of who Ben and Jules are as individuals or a couple, apart from wretched clichés. When Jules sees the creature peeking through the kitchen window, she shrieks; Ben pulls a classic husband blunder and convinces her that all she saw was a sneaky raccoon. Despite this, there’s no conflict between them. They meet incident after incident without breaking their marital stride. Maybe some couples can weather the stress of nightly monster incursions, but most of us mere mortals are capable of sparking arguments over the proper placement of dirty dishes. The Tank doesn’t need to make high drama of Ben and Jules’ relationship, but it does need to find space for both of them to act like humans, which never happens.
As for Reia, forget about it; the film certainly does. She’s a cipher. Her sole purpose in the film is to be Newt Jordan, though Carrie Henn and James Cameron efficiently and gracefully filled out that character. Expecting The Tank to live up to Aliens’ legacy is asking too much of a director with two feature credits to his name to date. But it’s right to ask more of Walker, and the film, than the thin character sketches he gives his principal cast to work with. If The Tank’s big bad beastie was a dud – if the energy Weta put into its conception didn’t pay off – then the film’s blander elements might not stand out so much. But either Weta did their job too well, or Walker didn’t do his well enough, because the monster is all The Tank has.
Director: Scott Walker
Writer: Scott Walker
Starring: Luciane Buchanan, Matt Whelan, Zara Nausbaum, Mark Mitchinson, Regina Hegemann
Release Date: April 21, 2023 (theaters); April 26, 2023 (VOD)
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can follow him on Twitter and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.