The Tank -2023-2023 🎯 Confirmed

Sound design plays an equally crucial role. Dripping pipes. The rumble of the water heater. And below it all, a slow, rhythmic thump-thump —something large moving through submerged concrete corridors. By the time the creatures fully appear, the audience has already been submerged in their world for forty minutes. Beneath the teeth and slime, The Tank offers a quietly resonant subtext. The tank itself is a man-made structure—a relic of a previous owner’s dark solution to an inconvenient problem. The film asks: What do we bury to protect our future? And what happens when the past refuses to stay buried?

★★★½ (out of 5) Watch if you dare: With the lights off and the volume up—preferably not in a house with a crawlspace. The Tank -2023-2023

Released quietly in April 2023, Scott Walker’s independent horror film bypassed the multiplex for VOD and select theaters—but for those who found it, The Tank became an unexpected gem. It’s a film that asks a deceptively simple question: What if the monster under the bed was actually under the floorboards? The plot is lean and mean. Ben (Luciane Buchanan’s real-life partner, Matt Whelan) inherits a remote, crumbling coastal property in Oregon after his estranged mother’s death. Along with his wife, Jules (Buchanan), and their young daughter, they hope to restore it—a classic “fixer-upper” dream. But the house comes with baggage: a sealed, flooded basement and a cryptic deed restriction prohibiting any excavation of the land. Sound design plays an equally crucial role

The Descent , The Host , Sweetheart , and anyone who’s ever heard a drip in the basement and decided not to investigate. And below it all, a slow, rhythmic thump-thump

Naturally, they break the rules. A broken water line forces Ben to drill a new well. That’s when the ground literally trembles. The old septic tank—a massive, concrete-lined pit—has been breached. And something has been sleeping in the muck for decades. Where The Tank distinguishes itself is its commitment to practical effects. The creatures (biologically inspired by axolotls and other neotenic amphibians) are slimy, pale, and claustrophobically real. They don’t stand on hind legs or deliver monologues. Instead, they move like drowned predators—undulating through flooded tunnels, sensing vibration, and striking with a wet, bone-crunching efficiency.