The Horror Show
Spring
by Justin Benson
and Aaron Moorehead
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead created one of my all-time favorite meta-horror movies, Resolution. I could go into what made that movie so awesome, but I won’t. I already covered that movie head-to-toe in another review. Today, I am here to talk about their latest movie Spring. It transcends multiple genres of film, Wikipedia describes it as a, “supernatural romantic science fiction horror film.” I also never thought I would say this about a horror movie, it was cute as hell.
Evan flees to Italy after both of his parents pass away and after getting into a bar fight that could possibly land him in jail. There he meets Louise, a girl who he finds himself inexplicably attracted to. After much effort, he gets her to agree to go on a date with him. They of course spend the night together, but in the middle of the night she turns into a horrific monster and leaves before Evan wakes. Louise has a secret: due to a genetic trait she inherited, she’s actually over 2,000 years old. Every twenty years she must get pregnant and her body will absorb the stem cells over the course of the week. The catch is during that week the stem cells cause her to transform into creatures from humanity’s evolutionary past. However, if she falls in love, her body will use her own stem cells instead of her baby’s, and she will lose her immortality. The only problem is that she is uncertain if she loves Evan. If she loves him, she will remain the same person at the end of the week. If she doesn't, she will turn into an entirely new person and Evan will lose her forever
I loved this movie, big surprise right? First of all this movie was freaking adorable. Seeing the relationship blossom between Evan and Louise brought a smile to my face. Benson and Moorehead truly captured the intimacy between two people beginning a new relationship. One such moment is when Evan and Louise bump into one another after they first hook-up. Louise pretends not to know him and even the audience thinks she is trying to push him away because of her condition. Then, she turns away from Evan, towards the camera, and she smiles. In that moment, you know she is just screwing with him. That’s the real relationship stuff, the kind of pranks couples pull on each other. The movie is filled with tons of little details like that, it makes the viewer want to smile with the new couple.
The movie is balanced with cutesy moments and thrilling horror segments. Spring does a great job of not showing the monster transformations in full detail. However, the few details that you do see are very Lovecraftian; tentacles, scales, sharp fangs, and other alien-like details. The concept of not showing everything and leaving a lot to the viewer’s imagination is also very Lovecraftian. Louise even warns even Evan that her final transformation will be the fullest and most vicious of all the others. However, the camera focuses solely on Evan while he explains to her what it means to be finite. All the viewer can hear in the background is her grotesque transformation. Everything I imagined in that transformation is much worse than anything the movie could have shown me.
My biggest criticism is that the movie takes too much time explaining how she transforms and not why. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t quite happy with the science fiction explanation they offered us. Frankly, I don’t think it mattered at all because it didn’t really effect the plot. I have tons of other questions that I would have preferred to be answered. Such as, where did the genetic trait that grants her and her ancestors immortality come from? I personally felt like there was some sort of outside influence on her family line.
We know that Louise is 2,000 years old, and we also know that her mother was immortal until she gave it up for love. It’s unknown how long Louise’s mother was alive for. If we assume she lived for at least 2,000 years and we know that modern humans have existed for about 200,000 years. If each generation lived at least 2,000 years then there would be at least 100 generations of immortals. That’s not enough generations for a genetic trait that unique to evolve, there must be some sort of outside influence, like cosmic entities or something. Sorry, enough with the crazy fan theories. Another question I had was are there other immortal people out there? Instead we got answers to other questions such as how does someone hide their immortality from the government successfully? The directors tried too hard to explain the nuances of the how and not the why.
The movie also had an interesting side plot involving Angelo, an Italian farmer that hired Evan as a field hand. Angelo confides in Evan that his wife died in a car accident at some point prior to the start of the movie. Later, we see Angelo mourning over a photo of who we assume to be his wife and we can see the photo is very old, probably sixty-plus years. The woman also appears to have hereditary heterochromia (one eye is a different color from the other), the same condition Louise suffers from. Shortly after that Evan makes a joke about the cliff side roads by asking if anyone has ever driven off of one. She replies that she did once. I think this implies that Louise in another lifetime was actually Angelo’s wife, and she faked her death to start a new life again. I thought that was neat little subplot but also subtle, unless you’re paying close attention to detail.
I think that Benson and Moorehead are great directors, like with Resolution, they excel with slow paced films. While I enjoyed their segment Bonestorm from V/H/S: Viral, it didn’t quite feel like Benson and Moorehead. It was an over-the-top gorefest and very fast paced, which is fine, but it didn’t set itself apart from other similar films. Those two like taking genres and turning them on their heads, creating unique films in the process. That’s what made Resolution and Spring so great. Or maybe anthologies just aren’t their thing. Either way, both of their feature length films have been fantastic. So I have faith that their next two upcoming films are going to be knockouts too, both are untitled at the moment. One is a UFO comedy and the other an Aleister Crowley project. Both of which sound like interesting and cool concepts, I’m looking forward to both. Now that they’ve experimented with romantic movies, it’ll be cool to see how they take on these other projects. Honestly, I never thought I would like a horror romance movie but Spring managed to melt my icy heart.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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