Film Review: TIN CAN: Existential Body Horror of the Claustrophobic Kind [Fantasia 2021]

Tin Can Review

Tin Can (2020) Film Review from the 25th Annual Fantasia International Film Festival, a movie directed by Seth A. Smith, starring Anna Hopkins, Simon Mutabazi, Michael Ironside, Amy Trefry, Chik White, Taylor Olson, and Shelley Thompson.

Jeez, between the Cronenberg boys, Panos Cosmatos, and Seth A. Smith, is it safe to assume that there’s something in the water in Canada? Psychedelic body horror appears to be alive and well up there, festering within the cinematic confines of our friends to the north, and Smith’s recent Tin Can is just the most recent example of that infection.

Sometime in the near future, a viral fungus plagues Canada’s eastern coast. The fungus is highly resilient and grows at a rapid pace, with its tendril-like spores eventually cocooning its victims to drain all life from them. Scientists at the pristine facility VAISE are working diligently to find a cure before it spreads to the rest of the country, trying to find its weakness while quarantining infected individuals for purposes of public safety and research. One of the lead scientists, Fret (Anna Hopkins), is close to a breakthrough, but she is soon kidnapped by unknown forces and awakens much later within a personal cryostasis chamber.

After unplugging herself from multiple IVs and yoinking a bunch of feeding tubes out of her throat, Fret scans her claustrophobic quarters for any possibility of escape. She soon discovers that she’s not alone, as there are others in their own personal chambers just outside her reach – including her former collaborator John (Simon Mutabazi), who sounds like he’s been there for a much longer stretch of time. There are also other people there, beyond the confines of a personal chamber – people with metallic hazmat suits that stoically wheel the chambered individuals in and out (all of whom Fret notices are at varying levels of fungal infection) and disposing of them in one way or another. It becomes a race against an unseen clock for Fret to find out how to escape her chamber before she suffers a similar fate, and to find out who put her there in the first place.

Many will be tempted to write this off as nothing but COVIDsploitation banking on the still-ongoing pandemic for existential scares and easy gross-outs (and a quick glance at places like Letterboxd suggest that many have already done just that). Yet such an approach feels disingenuous – not only because co-writer Darcy Spidle has already put such rumors to bed by confirming he and Smith wrote the first draft of Tin Can in 2017 (and filmed it in 2019), but also because it undermines the truly existential dread that biological unknowns can imbue within regional and/or worldwide populations by diminishing it to nothing but a marketing ploy.

If Tin Can was meant to be a riff on the COVID-19 pandemic, then it would’ve been way more heavy-handed about it. Fret wouldn’t have been fighting off metal-clad prison guards that were keeping her from her research, but rather anti-vax nutjobs who are convinced that contracting the fungus is better than getting a computer chip shot into their arm so Bill Gates can spy on them. (Of course, no media exists in any sort of vacuum, and Spidle succinctly acknowledges that and how “stories really are alive, and they evolve through time”.)

Instead, Tin Can is simply part body horror and part single-location thriller, and a squeamishly potent combination of the two at that. Both the fear of infection and fear of entrapment play off each other, creating a feedback loop of anxiety that sends our blood pressure levels through the cryostasis chamber’s sealed roof. Within that concoction there’s rumination on relationships that intersect at both the personal and societal levels, and how we humans have trouble viewing the ultimate scope of such things, although by and large Smith and Spidle are not really interested in making any grandiose declaration about life in the modern age.

Unless, the filmmakers are trying to show how the personal effects of jealousy and ego can ripple outwards uncontrollably, in which case Tin Can may be downright evil. I mean, it’s already evil for its unbearably patient approach, as Smith has us witness gross alterations to those biological vessels we call our bodies for minute after nerve-wracking minute. (Hey, you watch someone’s appendage fall off or a long tube get dragged out of someone’s throat or a needle get jabbed somewhere it definitely shouldn’t be jabbed and then tell me the filmmakers had good intentions!) (No offense, Smith.) But the cruelty that undergirds these readings is only amplified by its lack of blatant topicality and aggrandizement, giving off a menacing sense of nihilism – in both the characters and the story at-large – that’s truly unsettling as it burrows under your skin.

And none of this even touches on the other brilliant work that Smith’s team constructed to bring forth his terrifying vision. Production designer Matt Likely, art director Jason Johnson, and costume designer Sarah Haydon Roy contrast the sterility of Fret’s cryostasis chamber with the grimy lair where it resides, and Allan Cooke and Kyla Nicolle craft some truly stomach-churning make-up effects for the infected individuals. Kevin A. Fraser washes it all in a gross blue-grey-yellow haze while showcasing some truly impressive tight-space cinematography – it maintains a sense of claustrophobia while never feeling cloistered by its own limitations.

Tin Can is a compact and contained piece, relentless in its quest to disgust yet never overstepping its controlled bounds. The scope is limited but the fear is expansive, and Smith’s ultimate concoction is a terrifically constricted little oddity. It’s a film that you’ll be wanting over with and wanting more of in equal measure – so, in essence, for horror freaks, it’s an absolute must.

Rating: 8/10

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