#Horror (2015)
Matt Boiselle
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Starring Timothy Hutton, Chloe Sevigny, Haley Murphy
Directed by Tara Subkoff
Taken from a true (and unfortunate) story, Tara Subkoff’s latest, #Horror, delves into the ever-growing problem of bullying, and while the movie itself doesn’t really deliver many scares, the true “horror” here is in the subject matter.
From the movie’s opening scene, we get to see Balthazaar Getty’s rather quick appearance, and the initial thought is that we’re in for some seriously crazy stuff taking place. Unfortunately, the film crawls to a dead stop for the majority of the runtime.
Set against a post-modernistic, glass-encased mansion in wooded Connecticut, we see a group of entitled, well-to-do, overly maladjusted teen girls who love each other, hate each other, tear each other down, and ultimately run to their defense with backhanded praise… aah, the trials and tribulations of being a snotty adolescent. It turns out, however, that these girls are simply a by-product of their utterly useless parents and their non-existent skills at raising children, and also the crushing weight of the online social-media frenzy. The race to become popular by tearing someone down and letting the world see it on a variety of internet platforms is truly saddening, and to these girls, it’s all they’ve known, and they revel in it. Chloe Sevigny and Timothy Hutton play parents of different girls, and from their actions and mental framework, it’s really not all that hard to diagnose their children’s temperaments.
So, while the “friends” are having a sleepover party in the glass menagerie, there’s a small sub-plot that drudges up about a lunatic that used to own the home back in the Warhol days, and how he murdered a bunch of party-goers, therefore planting a small whodunit seed into the minds of viewers. Jumping back into cyber-world, someone is hashtagging the hell out of our little ladies and the horrors that are being snapped via cellphone-cams – oh, when will the madness stop? Is it all a game? Will the identity of the lunatic be revealed? My biggest question was: “When will this schizophrenic plot twisting cease?” I don’t have children, I don’t want children, and the problems of this world simply reinforce this decision more and more every day, and the sadness of true cases such as this merely acts as a cementing factor to not wanting to raise a child in this society.
Speaking from a reviewer’s opinion, this movie’s true horror is in what has brought the film to light, not the movie itself, and aside from Sevigny’s stuck-up depiction of a mother who’s lost in her own decadence and Timothy Hutton’s completely overacted role as a frenetic doctor-dad, the remainder of the cast are girls playing girls, problems and all. I watched the final 25 minutes of this zig-zagging misdirection in the hopes that some sense would be made of all that I’d watched, and aside from a minor relief, this movie just didn’t cut it for me. Attention to detail of a problem that’s crushing our youth down to small pieces: accomplished. Managing to lull the audience to near tears watching it all play out on screen: mastered. Chances of this guy pushing the play button again: ZERO.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
