Honor Farm, The (SXSW 2017)
Starring Olivia Applegate, Louis Hunter, Dora Madison, Liam Aiken, Katie Folger, Michael Eric Reid, Mackenzie Astin, Michelle Forbes, Josephine McAdam, Christina Parrish
Written and directed by Karen Skloss
Screened at the 2017 SXSW Film Festival
The Honor Farm may not be considered a typical midnight movie, but its blend of teen angst, the occult, and psychedelia represents the unique cultural mix found in Austin, making it a natural fit for the late night crowd at the SXSW Film Festival. Add the fact that SXSW and Austin Film Society co-founder Louis Black served as producer, and the twisted coming-of-age tale suddenly seems right at home among previous entries in the “keep Austin weird” film canon.
The Honor Farm isn’t really about the terror of discovering an unseen ceremony of the occult hidden away in the hill country; it’s about going through the sometimes horrific journey of finding yourself… while you’re on mushrooms.
Not to be rude, but besties Lucy (Applegate) and Annie (Folger) are pretty much your typical bow-heads dreaming of the perfect senior prom night that will cap off their high school years and send them off into the rest of their incredibly fulfilling lives in suburbia. After the night takes a turn for the worse thanks to their drunk dates, the two girls escape the night they expected and wind up embarking on the adventure they never knew they really needed. You know, how prom night should really be!
On a whim, they jump into a car with three of the wildest girls in school on their way to an abandoned prison work camp for a night of flashlight investigating and personal exploration. After agreeing to go down the rabbit hole with the rest of the group by downing a few stems and caps, it’s Lucy who winds up going on the most frightening journey of her young and sheltered life.
As the trip takes hold, Lucy has visions of an animal head with a human body calling her from afar, as if to invite her to join in some ancient dance. With the entire idea of prom as one of our last, nationally recognized rituals, writer/director Karen Skloss draws parallels with more pagan ideas of communing with nature to help guide Lucy through the process of creating a new, more worldly version of herself. As she starts to fall for JD (Hunter), the biggest drug dealer in school, Lucy realizes that she’s a lot deeper and more self-aware than her Eighties-inspired prom dress might suggest.
The kids do actually stumble upon some dark deeds in the bowels of the abandoned prison that shock them and challenge what they think they know about themselves, but Skloss uses the moment to embolden instead of enslaving them. The Honor Farm doesn’t have time for victims and the horror cliches that comes with them, and it takes a very deliberate turn in the second act that drives home the fact that this is not going to turn into a typical genre piece.
The classic horror setup of kids in the woods at an abandoned haunted building is really used to subvert the genre expectations that we’ve all grown accustomed to. Layered on top of that setup, imagery of the occult and moments that would make David Lynch proud do allow The Honor Farm to call itself genre, but those devices are cleverly used to aid in self-discovery. Instead of putting the cool kids of The Honor Farm on a path that should lead to their doom, it actually leads them into a psychedelic metamorphosis. It’s a document to remind us of the days when one night really could change your life.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
