‘Arcadian’ Review — Nic Cage creature feature is downright thrilling

A review of the new horror movie, in theaters April 12

At first, Benjamin Brewer’s new film Arcadian feels a bit too familiar. It’s about a father named Paul (Nicolas Cage) raising two boys after the end of the world, living in a secluded house in the middle of nowhere. It’s a little bit It Comes At Night, a little bit A Quiet Place. In Arcadian, something does indeed come at night. As the guys hunker down, the front door rattles with a horrific intensity; in the morning, the door is covered with deep scratches, and it’s crawling with bugs.

Joseph (Jaeden Martell) is the quiet, intellectual twin, while Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) is more boisterous. “Are we not men?” Paul demands when the boys express fear, stabbing his knife into the table. Thomas follows suit, but when Joseph tries, his knife doesn’t stick. That kind of thing.

Joseph designs machines, while Thomas loves to run, to dash through the woods to help out on a nearby farm. One night, however, he doesn’t make it home by sunset, setting into motion a series of events that ratchet the film up from a relatively quiet, post-apocalyptic family drama to an all-out action-horror melee.