Spring (2014)
I get recommended a lot of terrible, terrible horror movies, so I've learned to take any recommendations from the internet with a grain of salt. I had absolutely no idea what to expect from the relatively small film, Spring. It was directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorhead, and while I own Resolution on DVD, I've never actually watched it? How did it get there? Is it any good? I should probably watch Resolution, right?
I should definitely watch Resolution, because if Spring is any proof of what Benson and Moorhead can do together, they're a great team. I was actually shocked that this was recommended to me on horror forums, because it's such a non-horror movie. I'd actually call Spring a romance first a foremost, with monster movie leanings. Think Colossal, but less sophisticated and about love instead of people systemically destroying each other, and really the only similarity is the monster thing. Apparently I just like monster movies that are disguised as other things.
To watch Spring is to follow a whirlwind love affair at easy Italian afternoon speed, where a young man running away from his problems meets a local woman and they fall in love. She's got a terrifying secret, of course. Surprise! Yet the movie maintains that languid pace that makes you feel like you're watching it in a sunset haze, and it's lit beautifully. The atmosphere creation is some of the best I can recall for a long time - it's up there with The Love Witch and my beloved Sing Street for movies that really evoked another time and place. Guillermo del Toro loved it, and it's not surprising. Dude loves monsters in love stories.
Now I've showered it in praise, let's lightly dust on some minor complaints. For all of the leisure in its pacing, there are parts of this film that feel disproportionately rushed, and it's very hard to invest in a love story where we're given very little to root that love in. It feels almost like an editing problem - like chunks were cut where the characters resolved problems or grew closer, and instead we got the end result. I also had major issues with the female lead, played by Nadia Hilker - her performance felt a little stilted, which may have been a language thing, but her characterisation also felt inconsistent. We're not given enough information about, I don't know, her biology to explain it away to that, but there are things she does or says that feel completely out of line with something she'll have said in the scene just before. It helps that she is acting opposite Lou Taylor Pucci, who brings a really grounded, everyman sensibility to his character who would otherwise be kind of a flighty, impulsive weirdo. In spite of her strange performance and characterisation, their pairing makes sense.
I hate romance films. It's not my genre, unless it's deeply couched in something else or is reduced to a subplot. This is probably the most significantly romantic movie I've seen in the last few years, in spite of the whole monster thing, and I genuinely really enjoyed it and would happily return to it.
Rating: 8.5/10 - Go check out Spring if you haven't already - at the very least for something completely different to what's out at the moment.
I should definitely watch Resolution, because if Spring is any proof of what Benson and Moorhead can do together, they're a great team. I was actually shocked that this was recommended to me on horror forums, because it's such a non-horror movie. I'd actually call Spring a romance first a foremost, with monster movie leanings. Think Colossal, but less sophisticated and about love instead of people systemically destroying each other, and really the only similarity is the monster thing. Apparently I just like monster movies that are disguised as other things.
To watch Spring is to follow a whirlwind love affair at easy Italian afternoon speed, where a young man running away from his problems meets a local woman and they fall in love. She's got a terrifying secret, of course. Surprise! Yet the movie maintains that languid pace that makes you feel like you're watching it in a sunset haze, and it's lit beautifully. The atmosphere creation is some of the best I can recall for a long time - it's up there with The Love Witch and my beloved Sing Street for movies that really evoked another time and place. Guillermo del Toro loved it, and it's not surprising. Dude loves monsters in love stories.
Now I've showered it in praise, let's lightly dust on some minor complaints. For all of the leisure in its pacing, there are parts of this film that feel disproportionately rushed, and it's very hard to invest in a love story where we're given very little to root that love in. It feels almost like an editing problem - like chunks were cut where the characters resolved problems or grew closer, and instead we got the end result. I also had major issues with the female lead, played by Nadia Hilker - her performance felt a little stilted, which may have been a language thing, but her characterisation also felt inconsistent. We're not given enough information about, I don't know, her biology to explain it away to that, but there are things she does or says that feel completely out of line with something she'll have said in the scene just before. It helps that she is acting opposite Lou Taylor Pucci, who brings a really grounded, everyman sensibility to his character who would otherwise be kind of a flighty, impulsive weirdo. In spite of her strange performance and characterisation, their pairing makes sense.
I hate romance films. It's not my genre, unless it's deeply couched in something else or is reduced to a subplot. This is probably the most significantly romantic movie I've seen in the last few years, in spite of the whole monster thing, and I genuinely really enjoyed it and would happily return to it.
Rating: 8.5/10 - Go check out Spring if you haven't already - at the very least for something completely different to what's out at the moment.
Comments
Post a Comment