07 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen 2016: Hellions (2015)

I like weird movies.  I always have and I'm not 100% sure why.  Pragmatically, I like movies that challenge my perception of what I'm seeing and leave the ending open enough for me to imagine the continuation/conclusion of the story while the credits are rolling.  But even writing that here feels like a bit of a cop out.  I also like when a movie is so strange and bizarre that I have to watch it again and again and again to try and determine just what the hell I watched.  There's a Canadian filmmaker named Bruce McDonald who makes films like that and he seems to have provided yet another bizarre horror film, set on Halloween, called Hellions.

How the hell do I describe this movie?  It's a psychotronic Halloween pregnancy nightmare.  Let that sink in for a minute.  The simple description of the plot is that seventeen year old Dora (Chloe Rose) learns that she's 4 weeks pregnant on Halloween.  While weighing this discovery in her mind and waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up she begins to get accosted by children in the creepiest damn costumes you've ever seen.  Their taunting escalates as they show her boyfriend's head in their candy sack and suddenly the entire world shifts to a crazy pink world where a tornado happens inside a kitchen and it becomes completely impossible to discern what is real and what is fantasy.

I love Bruce McDonald's films.  That is to say, I love the three that I have seen, including this one.  The first film of his that I saw was The Tracey Fragments and in 2014 when I first did this little movie challenge I watched and reviewed the incredibly strange, but also arresting, Pontypool.  Hellions fits in nicely with the two films.  Like Tracey Fragments it employs incredible hallucinogenic editing sequences to metaphorically show (rather than tell) the heroines fracturing psyche.  Like Pontypool it employs equally incredible music and sound editing as well as subversion of horror tropes, such as deliberately over the top acting moments to accentuate the psychotically deranged fever dream that we've been sucked into.  Hellions also takes the creepy kid factor and pushes it to one of the most extreme levels paying homage and simultaneously outdoing classics like Bloody Birthday and Children of the Corn.  And when you think it couldn't go further, it does, and how.  Hint, if you've seen Andrzej Zulawski's Possession you may have an idea.

The music of this film stands above and beyond.  Composer Todor Kobakov and Ian LeFeuvre have quite possible crafted the creepiest mixture of electronic, rock, and chorale I've ever heard.  Every element comes together to set and elevate the mood of the film making it damn near impossible to look away even when you may want to.  The ending is questionable and since I've been using the "fever dream" analogy I feel it is appropriate to say that I'm still not sure if Dora's entire experience was real or imagined.  Definitely one to watch once, twice, maybe even three times, and conveniently on Netflix.  Oh yeah, and Robert Patrick (Terminator 2) is in it and he's wonderful.

The Innkeepers: 01 of 31 Horror Films I Have Never Seen!

Last year I made an attempt at a personal challenge to watch 31 Horror films that I had never seen before.  Due to my work schedule and my personal life being in a state of turmoil I was unable to complete this challenge so this year I’m taking the plunge once again with the intention of completing it come hell or high water.

For film number one, I settled on Ti West’s The Innkeepers.  The film is a loving homage to the Haunted House Ghost Story, while simultaneously being a bit of a critique on the millennial generation.  The main characters, Claire and Luke, are spending the last weekend at work before the Yankee Peddler Inn will close its doors once and for all.  Luke is really more of the supporting character of the story as the central focus is Claire, an early 20s college dropout who has no idea what she wants out of life.  Sara Paxton plays Claire with sort of manic energy that certainly harkens to a younger generation which is contrasted nicely by Pat Healy’s dead pan malaise.

West throws us into the story with very little exposition other than a few remarks that ultimately lead us to our central focus, the search for proof that a spirit is haunting the Inn.  From there the story unfolds in a fashion that was a bit too typical for my tastes.  The film is very well shot, very well lit, very well edited, and even very well scored, but West spends too much time trying to make the world real before getting to the juicy bits. 

Ultimately I found it rather tedious and not nearly as arresting as his previous film, House of the Devil.  I couldn’t relate with Claire and Luke, because I have nothing in common with them.  Overall, I think West, who wrote/directed/edited the film, could have gotten to the actual conflict in the story much faster than he did.  He opted for a slow burn type of story, but the climax fell short.  Still there were a few enjoyable jumpy moments, great make up, and Kelly McGillis was perfectly cast as a retired actor turned spiritual guru.

For all its short comings, I still enjoyed the film more than found footage ghost films like the Paranormal Activity series, a series which needs to die horribly in a fire.  West does a good job setting up the atmosphere, but all the atmosphere in the world doesn’t quite save this film from the “meh” factor.

I gave it 3 out of 5 Skulls.