Arcadian, starring Nicolas Cage, Jaeden Martell, and Maxwell Jenkins is a rather interesting post-apocalyptic creature feature thriller. Post apocalyptic stories are a dime a dozen and story wise this film doesn’t stand out a whole lot and wasn’t particularly scary, but this was certainly an entertaining watch.

This film starts with Nic Cage’s character Paul running through a destroyed city as sirens blare, gunfire and explosions can be heard in the background. Paul eventually makes it to his shelter where he picks up his two infant sons and fades to the countryside 15 years later.

It’s quickly established that it isn’t safe outside after dark as they board up and double check every door and window as the sun begins to set. Something (or multiple somethings) attempted to batter down the door, and the next day when investigating the damage there were tons of claw marks and one board had a dozen large beetles (or something similar) under it leading Paul and his sons to need to replace part of the frame. This built some sort of expectation that beetles or other creepy crawlies played some important role here but boy is that role not communicated well. Bugs in general only make an appearance two maybe three more times in the movie, if the bugs were wholly removed from the movie there would be zero impact on the story or its progression.

The creatures appear to have some kind of mystical power to be able to fly small rocks up out of a ravine laying a very effective trap but at no other point use or display any supernatural force-like powers, another thing that could have been removed. it served no actual purpose since narratively if you want someone to slip or lose their footing, it is easy to do that without magically flying rocks into position… Especially if you never intend to display or touch upon that again.

They established that there is some sort of intelligence behind the creatures, an ability to adapt, a pattern to battering the doors as if testing them as opposed to just throwing themselves at it, and the reveal for the creature was wonderful. The first sightings we get of the monsters truly feel like the monsters that lurk in the dark. Large wide grins, piercing eyes, tall gangly beings with unfolding growing limbs capable of stretching several feet long. They really set it up in my opinion for a wonderful, suspenseful, psychological horror-thriller. Unfortunately just like with everything else they didn’t utilize the unsettlingly long unfolding limbs for more than a single scene early on.

There was a LOT of potential in this movie, and it could have been a LOT better. I think too much energy was spent trying to see how many one-off things could be thrown in as opposed to taking one good idea and building on and around it. Again, this is certainly an entertaining movie, it’s worth the watch if not for seeing the creatures themselves as they interact with the survivors of the apocalypse. The acting in general while not bad, was also nothing to write home about. 5 stars, if you want to watch it it’s streaming on Shudder.