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Spring
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| Year: |
2014
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Director: |
Justin Benson, Aaron Moorehead
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| Stars: |
Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker, Vanessa Bednar, Shane Brady, Francesco Carnelutti, Vinny Curran, Augie Duke, Jeremy Gardner, Holly Hawkins, Kenzo Lee, Nick Nevern, Chris Palko, Jonathan Silvestri
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| Genre: |
Horror, Drama, Romance, Weirdo, Fantasy |
| Rating: |
  8 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Having already lost a father to a heart-attack, aimless twenty-something Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) now loses his mom to cancer. Alone without any family, the worst day of Evan's life somehow gets even worse when a drunken thug picks a fight in a bar. He knocks the guy's teeth out but with cops on his tail and the thug looking for payback, impulsively flies to Italy. Travelling across the country Evan parties with other tourists, drifting aimlessly until he meets sultry Louise (Nadia Hilker) who offers to sleep with him right away. Though Evan can't believe his luck, he is too wary to jump into bed with a strange girl, no matter how beautiful. He asks her on a date instead, whereupon Louise walks away. After Evan takes a job on a farm run by kindly old Angelo (Francesco Carnelutti) he runs into Louise again at a museum where he learns she is studying evolutionary genetics and is uncannily knowledgeable about ancient art. This time his charm proves more persuasive. Evan and Louise begin a casual relationship though he grows frustrated that she avoids real intimacy. What he does not know is at certain times Louise confines herself to a cave and turns into a hideous hairy, fanged, flesh-eating monster.
Lucio Fulci, of all people, once opined the horror genre needed to evolve beyond mindless gore and regain the poetry and humanity of our dreams. With its delicately dreamy atmosphere and beguiling tragicomic romance offset by images of surreal body-horror, Spring fits that brief. It is a breath of fresh air bringing heart and pathos back to a genre too often consumed with numbing shock tactics to the detriment of character and storytelling. The first half of the film is almost like Richard Linklater's classic indie romance Before Sunrise (1995). Co-directors Justin Benson, who also scripted, and Aaron Moorehead, whose lyrical cinematography soaks in the sun-drenched Italian scenery, deftly immerse viewers in Evan's devastating emotional loss. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one will find the scene where he says goodbye to his mother hard to watch. Thereafter the film just as deftly conveys the reinvigorating thrill of Evan's growing fascination with the smart, spirited, stimulating Louise.
As the title suggests, Spring concerns itself with the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Much like the Linklater film the characters grow increasingly intimate through philosophizing about metaphysics, art, nature, love and death. Terrific performances from affable Lou Taylor Pucci and Ornella Muti look-alike Nadia Hilker, portraying a more warmly seductive and charming lady monster removed from the clichéd femme fatale, coupled with a disarmingly witty script render the characters compelling and likeable. Which makes it easy to invest in their relationship. For the most part the film keeps the romantic and monstrous elements separate teasing the viewer with subtle moments of strangeness on the edge of the frame: the flowers that bloom whenever Louise walks by, caterpillars wriggling across the floor, even the smiling little girl that pops in and out of one scene that seems like an accident left in for its spontaneity. The central conceit of a self-loathing monster concealing its flesh-eating proclivities in pursuit of a normal relationship most obviously evokes George A. Romero's modernist vampire gem Martin (1977). There are also traces of Curtis Harrington's haunting Night Tide (1963) where the hero again discovers the girl of his dreams is an ageless supernatural creature. Throughout the viewer is left wondering whether Louise is capable of reciprocating Evan's love or is merely playing with her food. Things come to a head with the killing of an especially obnoxious American tourist (the two boozy, laddy, misogynistic, xenophobic Brits, Evan encounters in his early misadventures also flirt with caricature) and a turn of events simultaneously creepy, amusing and romantic.
Despite one fine jump-scare, Spring is more witty and warm than visceral or especially suspenseful but the highly accomplished visual effects yield several unsettling moments of Lovecraftian horror and present a fairly original monster in a neat fusion of science fiction and the supernatural. A vein of delightfully deadpan humour runs throughout as when Evan casually inquires whether Louise is a werewolf, vampire, alien or zombie and later, in a nod to An American Werewolf in London (1981), rings a buddy back in America for advice and is dismissed as stoned. Overall though, Spring is a surprisingly beautiful allegory about taking a chance on the great unknown and falling in love that just happens to include a few blood splattered deaths and a hideous squid monster.
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| Reviewer: |
Andrew Pragasam
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