Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Hellions


(2015)***1/2

On Halloween a young girl discovers she is stuck with an unwanted pregnancy. Rather then go to a party she opts to sit home sulking while her mom takes little brother out trick or treating. After some encouraging words from mom she decides to go to the party anyway so she dresses up and waits for her boyfriend. The doorbell rings, it's a knockoff from Trick 'r Treats' Sam but she tells him she has no candy left. Shortly there is another relentless knock/ring and it's the same kid but he now has friends. She sees they have smashed all of her pumpkins and the creepy kid calls her mama and puts a bloody hand on her belly so she slams the door. The house then gets pelted with eggs but that is far from the end of the scourge.  As the crowd of creepy kids grows and becomes more aggressive she begins having abdominal pain and calls for help. Help comes but the danger and weirdness of the evening is far from over.


Much of this film is shot through a surrealistic rose filter adding to the dreamy weirdness vibe. The kid that touched her belly obviously activated something and the baby is growing at warp speed. I am giving this a good rating mostly because it captured my full attention throughout and the title is 100% accurate, they certainly are hellions. There is a consistent creepy vibe and the threat is very real but where the film fails is in the somewhat disjointed storyline. Some questions are never answered and again we are left with an open ending that should have pissed me off but at that point I was too confused to be pissed. Still it is Halloween themed and the little bastards are quite fun to watch. Take it or leave it.

4 comments:

JPX said...

Keeping your critiques in mind this sounds like a good one! You're unearthing some nifty films this year!

AC said...

Agreed, another good find for Catfreeek!

Trevor said...

The way you describe it, it seems like it's a little predictable. I'm guessing the hellions are all in her mind/dream state as she's worried about being pregnant.

Octopunk said...

There seems to be a tie-in with open-endedness and horror that is reflecting the mental state of the main character (this, The Orphanage, The Babadook). As we've gotten into before I kind of hate open endings UNLESS they're done right. Maybe the psychological angle skews well with it.

Malevolent

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