Hellions an Insane Piece of Surrealistic Horror Nonsense
It is Halloween, and beautiful if troubled 17-year-old Dora (Chloe Rose) has learned she’s pregnant. With her mother Kate (Rachel Wilson) out for the holiday with her younger brother Remi (Peter DaCunha), she’s got the house to herself, giving those who come to the door candy while weighing what to tell boyfriend Jace (Luke Bilyk). But the kids coming to the door are strange, feral creatures wearing a variety of terrifying masks, all of them more attracted than normal by the teenager’s belly, almost as if they know she’s with child. It’s pretty odd, and Dora is starting to get a little worried, and as more and more of these little guys start to surround her home it becomes rather clear these aren’t your average everyday trick-or-treaters.
PHOTO: IFC Films
Hellions is weird. Part body horror suspenser in the vein of David Cronenberg’s unsettling classic The Brood, part home invasion thriller with a cadre of masked marauders looking to harm those inside, part surreal ghost story about unearthly beings possessing the living for their own nefarious ends, this Canadian import is insane. Screenwriter Pascal Trottier (The Colony) and veteran journeyman director Bruce McDonald (his filmography contains everything from Pontypool to My Babysitter’s a Vampire, Hard Core Logo to The Tracy Fragments, episodes of “Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years” to the Showtime remake of “Queer as Folk”) have crafted a psychological freak-out that’s all over the map, throwing so many ideas and concepts up at the screen there’s virtually no way any of them can stick around long enough to make a lasting impression.
Not that this surreal bit of ghoulish nastiness doesn’t pique interest. McDonald has always been a filmmaker willing to play around with narrative formalities, unafraid to push buttons and go off into seemingly nonsensical tangents in order to provoke a reaction from the viewer. That’s certainly the case here, he and cinematographer Norayr Kasper (Calendar) utilizing an esoteric color grading scheme that shifts and transitions depending on Dora’s increasingly frazzled mental condition. There’s also a delirious eccentricity to Duff Smith’s (Hard Core Logo 2) editing that kept me on my toes, everything just left enough of center to make it impossible to get a reading on the heroine and gauge if what was happening to her was authentic or just a figment of her psychologically scarred imagination.
PHOTO: IFC Films
Even so, there’s never enough development of Dora, her life or those she comes into contact with to form a real bond with the teenager. As such, it was difficult to care if she survived the night, and at a certain point it all just started to resemble a subpar episode of “Tales from the Crypt” more than it did anything substantive. Robert Patrick hams it up in thankless role as a local police officer who knows more about what’s going on than he should, while a bit involving Dora’s kindly doctor (Rossif Sutherland) starts promisingly enough only to fall frustratingly flat. Most egregiously, Trottier never gives Rose enough to do to make her plight have any weight or meaning, the inherent emotional complexities of her situation only hinted at in the briefest, most esoteric of brushstrokes.
Hellions never bored me, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say some of the imagery regarding all the bright orange pumpkins – especially one inside Dora’s house and involving her doctor – didn’t get under my skin. McDonald is just too talented to make a movie that’s a complete waste of time, and considering the obvious creep factor of the scenario I was intrigued as to where he and Trottier were going to take things. But the movie just doesn’t have any weight, any meaning, never earning the sorrow-laced conclusion the final images hint at. I wanted more, the fact McDonald’s latest refused to give it to me an upsetting turn of events I admit I did not see coming.
Film Rating: 1½ (out of 4)
