After Jonathan (Frankie Muniz) hooks up with sexy Dena (Chelsea Edmundson) through a swinger’s hotline, he becomes incredibly ill. Suffering from blackouts and hallucinations, Jonathan’s life begins to fall apart. He becomes convinced that he’s the helpless victim of an evil cult that’s cursed him with deadly mystical forces beyond his control. But is this supernatural threat real or all in Jonathan’s troubled mind? This riveting horror-thriller will leave you shaken long after it’s all done.
Films that keep you guessing up until the end are the best in my opinion and “The Black String” does just that. Frankie Muniz stars in this psychodrama as Jonathan, a character on the slide down in life. His friends are moving on with their lives while he is staying in place, working at a liquor store and reading self-help books while avoiding life. When he finally leaps into a social life he is left with an awful rash, an STD, and after that, he doesn’t just slide down the slope of life, he falls, hard all the way to the bottom. This story has an ethereal take on it, demons and the supernatural mix with sexually transmitted diseases and medical prognosis. It all creates an unstable character, Jonathan, and horror feed off of the unstable.
The key to keeping an audience hooked on this type of thing is to take what would happen in real life and mix in bouts of the paranormal. Jonathan periodically finds himself in situations that can’t be explained and you are right there alongside him as demons peek around corners and pustules on the wall spawn human bodies. You have no reason to doubt him until the doctors come in and explain it was hallucinations. You step back and ask yourself, would I believe someone who was acting erratically like him? Look at how he is dressed, his clothes are in tatters, his life is slipping out of his grasp, do these demons exist or has he just lost his grip on reality? This film makes you step back and apply these scenes to your real life.
Would you give the homeless kid $5 to make a phone call? Would you believe that a kid with drugs still in his system from the toxicology report when he told you he doesn’t use? This film is one that leaves you guessing and wondering what if and that is the key to pulling something off like this. “The Black String” is worth a watch, especially being led by Muniz who brings his wiry energy to the table and knocks the performance out of the park.
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