Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with some more weirdness-sharing from Fantastic Fest 2014! This one is a new film not really on many people's radars. It's a little shoe-string budget shocker called The Hive, which plays out as a contagion film with a pinch of Evil Dead and Memento thrown in for good measure.
The whole story is framed around young Gabriel Basso (one of the trio in the great indie Kings of Summer) who wakes up in a trashed room, complete with boarded up windows, and is clearly sick. He vomits black stuff, his body is covered in rashes and mysterious wounds and his memory is gone. He's not in a good place, to say the least.
There's something behind a door with the word “Monster” written on it in chalk, another door with a warning to not let anybody in under any circumstances and a wall with some drawings of a pretty girl and a hastily scrawled “Remember” written above it. It's up to this poor bastard to figure out what the hell is going on and Sherlock his way into letting him (and vicariously us) in on the events that lead up to the start of the film.
The beginning is a bit jarring and not just because we're dropped into the end of the story. Director David Yarovesky visually tries to disorient the audience as well, using weird angles and crazy editing to put us in the lead's headspace. I get the creative instinct behind that choice, but it maybe worked a little too well because I thought I was in for a shaky-cam nightmare. But when the movie started to settle down and just tell the story a couple minutes in it really started to click.
You have the mystery aspect as well as the reveal of a genuinely sweet romance story as the main character starts putting the pieces together. One of the most shocking things in this gross-out movie full of shocking things is that this guy starts to remember he was a huge dickhead. Just your typical jock douchbag whose only real ambition seems to be fucking any girl he can charm out of her panties. And he is charming. I wouldn't go so far as to call the guy evil, he's just young, dumb and full of you-know-what.
That is until he (literally) runs into Katie (Kathryn Prescott), a no bullshit emotionally honest girl who grabs his attention immediately. He doesn't exactly start out on the right foot by sending her to their summer camp nursery, but they quickly start a relationship that brings the best out of him and would have gone extremely well if the actual threat of the film didn't enter the picture.
I'll try to avoid spoilers, but I will say something delivers a contagious disease into the story and those who get infected act a little bit like Deadites. More creepy and taunting than zombies, which is what you might expect from a set-up like this.
One of the more troubling revelations of the main character is that the memories that start coming to surface aren't always his own. That ties into the contagion threat and I'm sure you can look at the title and get an inkling of the direction they're going here.
The acting from most everybody is pretty great. Basso carries the film well, but I'd wager we'll see a re-edit of this film before it goes into whatever distribution it will get. There's only so many times he can say “What the fuck!?!” before it starts getting comical.
Again, that's mostly contained in the opening. All the flashback pieces gives Basso the opportunity to really show growth as a character and display an impressive range as an actor. He has a few awkward line deliveries when he's in his “panic mode,” but those are nitpicks. Even if they remain in the final released cut it's a minor thing that passes by quickly.
Prescott also does a great job as the lady that breaks this poonhound out of his predictable and kinda sad rut. She's adorable, but no pushover and she balances strength and vulnerability perfectly, really selling the unlikely love story between these two people. Without that love story working then you wouldn't give two shits about the mystery they spend the movie uncovering or care at all about the characters once the shit hits the fan.
It's hard for me to comment on the production value since there was a DCP issue and the film had to screen off of the Blu-Ray backup, which had to be a dagger to Yarovesky's heart since this was the world premiere of the film. He said afterwards that the film was way too dark and I agree with that. I can't critique the look outside of broad terms, but I can say there seemed to be some inventive lighting ideas, including some good blacklight work.
All in all the flick was very strong. You've seen many different aspects of this movie before, but never in this exact combination. They work well together and Yarovesky obviously has a knack for getting good performances out of his actors, so we're left with one of those low, low budget flicks that have an actual impact on the viewer and doesn't play only as stuff to watch. That in and of itself is a minor miracle in the microbudget genre world.
Them's my thoughts! Got many more Fantastic Fest reviews to come and an interview with one Mr. Keanu Reeves in which I get him talking about Station (no shit). Stay tuned for all that fun stuff!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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