
Nowadays, Ganymede is the new film that Colby Holt along with his partner Sam Probst who worked on Pig Hag previously, has made. The film, to an extent, draws from their life. I guess it’s growing up queer in a devout Christian household, rather than being hunted by some spectral entity.
While there are no monsters in the film’s opening scene, it’s certainly ominous enough. A man sits on a piece of wood and begins smoking a cigarette before the camera pans to show that he is on a bridge with bricks tied around his torso. He then begins to wade into the sea very deliberately. Fast forwarding to the present day, we are introduced to Lee Fletcher, played by Jordan Doww, who is feeling warm after running in the night and jumps into a lake where he sees something disturbing.
Lee is a young man who has a bright future. He is a star athlete at his school while his father “Big” Lee Fletcher (Joe Chrest, Stranger Things, Lisa Frankenstein) serves as a county commissioner. Joining him in his events is his mother Floy Fletcher (Robyn Lively, The Karate Kid Part III, Cobra Kai) and they are always involved in their local church headed by Pastor Royer (David Koechner, Anchorman The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse).
Lee though has had a secret for a long time now which is only going to be harder to maintain after he meets Kyle (Pablo Castelblanco, Alaska Daily, There is No Such Thing As A Dragon) who is very open with his sexuality and Lee is the opposite of that. That’s when some monsters, both human and non-human, start being visible.
In creating Ganymede, Holt and Probst have crafted a movie that is primarily dramatic work, which deservedly won several awards, among them, the Pride Award at the Chattanooga Film Festival and the Audience award for the Best Narrative Feature Film at the Reeling International Film Festival.
The movie is skimming the surface when dealing with more current issues such as the problem of homophobia, conversion therapy, the stress a situation like this brings to a family, and the hypocrisy that allows people to conveniently refer to Leviticus every time same-sex relationships are brought up, but conveniently ignore the Seventh Commandment forbidding adultery. It correctly also tries to avoid any undue drama on any of these features and yet bringing in electroshock therapy to the narrative will likely come across as dramatic no matter how it is incorporated into the storyline.
Where Ganymede touches on a device which is typically seen in LGBTQ coming-of-age stories, and indeed, any coming-of-age tales, is the idea of the supernatural. And even if Kosar J. Anthony, Gant Lawrence, and Troy Holbrook (Shameless, Night’s End Lawrence Gant, Candyman, Perpetrator; Strain 100, Detention of the Dead) delivered some noteworthy effects work, it is not really a horror film either. Rather it is a Southern Gothic which, in the way of movies like Cold Moon, are not so much concerned with the monsters they create as they are with family drama and skeletons hidden away in the cupboard.
Ganymede may seem like an unlikely combination at first. It’s fair to argue that the creature might not have been necessary for Ganymede’s conception either. And I get why some people will get annoyed at its inclusions. However, since Southern Gothic deals with themes of troubled families, secrets, and sexuality, I didn’t think that it was such a huge leap. On the contrary, it enhanced the originality of the narrative which is quite standard and the character of the spectre accentuates the theme of the narrative.
Ganymede is primarily a drama, and this drama is enhanced by the presence of otherworldly elements which are smoothly interwoven into the film. So, if you are in the mood for a drama that offers some chills in the atmospheric department, this would be a good fit.
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