The Horror Show
Hate Crime
by James Cullen Bressack
I was excited to hear about the latest DVD releasing (at the time) from Unearthed Films. I waited anxiously for “Hate Crime” to be available. The plot sounded pretty intense and the reviews were of the variety I like (the kind that almost sound like negative warnings if you're not as sick as I am). I finally bought/watched it and although it didn't match my expectations, I found some things about it worth noting. But first, the plot!
“Hate Crime” doesn't waste any time. The setup is simply a Jewish family throwing a birthday party for their youngest son. Not five minutes in, a knock comes at the door. What follows is roughly eighty minutes of methed-out neo-nazis taking their bigotry and hatred out on the family. The story juggles flat-out violence with the skinhead scum spouting off their disgusting views about white power and anti-Semitic sentiment. That's it. That's really all it is. This brief statement is not a criticism. Found Footage works better with simple plot and this film catches on to that quite quick. The movie keeps itself busy and you usually won't find yourself bored for too long. You will most likely get tired with it, but it changes pace enough to keep you interested for the most part.
The neo-nazi characters are idiots, first of all. Off the bat, I'll make it clear that as a non-piece-of-human-garbage, I have nothing but disdain for white supremacists and anti-Semitics. Because of this, I'm not opposed to them being portrayed as walking punchlines, but this aspect takes the film down a level. A film like “American History X” gains points for delving with a complex character who isn't necessarily a purely evil human, gone down the wrong path, this one just revels in how ridiculous the characters are. For a shock flick, that's just fine because chaos is best, but “Hate Crime” shoots itself in the foot for this reason. The positive reviews on the DVD cover talk of how the film is actually quite “Important” and says a lot about society. In the end, it doesn't. I don't watch these types of movies for their insightful thoughts on humanity necessarily, but if you're going to promote yourself as being philosophical, you can't have your characters be nothing but cartoonish. It's realistic, of course. I would venture to say that most hate group members are clowns and nothing more. But trying to act serious and have braying jackasses as your villains is somewhat counterproductive. The dialogue of the trio of terror is something that you might hear in a movie of the week about racism. They say all the basic stuff about Aryan people being superior and more attractive and Jews ruining the country and blah blah blah. Sure, it's a perfectly fine example of hate speech, but there is no flavor to it. It's just the same stuff we've heard a million times without any new insight into the villains head. Imagine if every movie serial killer just spouted off about their horrible mother or every movie businessman locked their door on someone begging for money. We’ve seen such character traits done so well so many times that now, in 2014, you gotta up your game a bit.
The dialogue of the family isn't much better. Even the few minutes of interaction before the horror started seemed forced and cliché. I don't care what anyone thinks, I believe the “August Underground” trilogy to be insanely realistic. When the characters are talking, I totally believe them. This film doesn't fare so well. It's a sloppy combination of attempting brutal horror with cheesy Lifetime dialogue. When the whole point of a movie is that it's supposed to be hyper-realistic and come across as if it's actually happening, weak acting/writing can be a huge nail in the coffin. Once the terror gets going the family is mainly reduced to crying, begging and screaming, which I guess is fair. That's a perfectly understandable reaction. But if the victims are just going to be notches on the killer's bedpost (which is fine) you need to beef up the killers at least. Here we are given no reason to care about anyone other than the basic concept of innocents being killed. In my book, a movie doesn't get points on concept alone. You have to build up at least one side of the equation.
The reason I was most excited to see this movie is because it sounded like a “hard to watch” type of experience. I think that horror is organically supposed to be this way, so I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, I felt that it only disappointed on that front. Sure, plenty of despicable things technically happen and they would sound awful if I just plainly laid them out for you. But in practice, they just fall flat. Nothing in the film is graphic. I get that sometimes what you don't see makes it scarier but that's rarely the case with Found Footage and certainly isn't the case with this movie. It's almost comical at times. It almost seems like a pitch meeting for depravity come to life. I can almost picture a slick salesman going “and then this happens and it's super sick, right? And then this guy is forced to have sex with this chick. Isn't that gross?!” I also picture this imaginary salesman being twelve. There isn't much maturity to be seen here and it leaves it all to be unsatisfying. The atrocities are just fine but if done differently, the exact same things could have been a lot more effective.
I don't want to make it sound like the movie is a failure, though, by any means. Overall, it's very entertaining. The scumbags are meth abusers as I said before, and the combination of the growing chemical corruption of their minds mixed with the horrifying circumstances can be a lot of fun. The style is actually really neat and it was designed quite well. The main scumbag's mask is really intimidating and they do physically resemble foot-soldiers of the dirt-ball elite you see in Klan documentaries and such. There is one scene in particular that I won't ruin which is actually really strong. All I'll say is that it takes place in a bathroom and at one point becomes somewhat, dare I say...touching. I'd be lying if I said I didn't care what happened; it kept my attention. And, in the end, that's all I really ask from a film.
Is “Hate Crime” about a very serious subject that, unfortunately, has a reality attached to it? Sure. But no film grows because of an idea alone. The exploitation genre is steeped in horrible subject matter. Hell, possibly my favorite sub-sub-genre is what's called “Nazisploitation”. It is, by definition, awful. It takes advantage of an unforgivable genocide that, sadly, really happened. That's actually what I love about exploitation; it's unapologetic. Exploitation and shock know they’re being terrible, but that's the whole point. This movie, however, refuses to shake its attempt at “intellectual cred”. In the end, this just makes the film seem uneven. The concept is awesome. There is a lot than can be done with a “neo-nazi nightmare Found Footage gore-fest.” But this movie instead treads in safe water while bragging about being in the deep end. After all is said and done, though, I'm happy to have it in my collection.
PJ Griffin, HMS
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