4 out of 5

Directed by: Bruce McDonald

As I’ve watched, lately, a small handful of well-regarded flicks that I’ve ended up considering average, I got to a point of wondering (and I’ve been here before) if I’ve become a jaded film-viewer who’d never be satisfied.  Thankfully, things like Hellions come along and remind me – if simply by the very physical notion of being unwilling to pause the movie and having my attentions fully grabbed by what’s on the screen – that there’s still power in film for me, and still plenty of great movies to discover.

Now before I get into this thing, I’m going to write off one potential aspect of the movie: whether it’s about abortion, and whether or not McDonald and writer Pascal Trottier are taking a stance on that.  First and foremost: I don’t care.  If there is a clear right / wrong to the film, I don’t think it overly moralizes that, and if the belief is that the horrors experienced by the main character toss it clearly into one camp over the other, I’d argue that pregnancy horror is a long-established genre.  You could even say that any killer kid movie fiddles with this a bit, but regardless, the “unknown” part of being a first time mum has served as fodder for a slew of flicks throughout the years.  Obviously you’ll have your own take, and maybe that take will be an extension of your own feelings on the subject (the pro-life / pro-choice one), of which I can’t be much bothered to get into a fluster since I don’t socialize and haven’t seen a vagina in years.  (Though I’d be pro-choice, ’cause life ain’t precious, so go crazy.)

Dora (Chloe Rose) is a rebellious teen with a rebellious boyfriend who wears a leather jacket.  She cuts class, has spats with her prom queen mum, and – as we find out after her visit to the doctor – is pregnant at 17.  And while this can be easily captured in the sentences just written, and while plenty of films would take a similar shortcut of rock-and-roll and middle finger montages to tell us the same in as short a time as possible, McDonald and Hellions do what – since I just watched it and it’s fresh on the mind – The Hallow didn’t do and properly use the first third of our movie to establish tone, and to establish characters.  So instead of quick and dirty story-telling, we get a cold open at a hospital, with Dora stumbling toward the camera, the shot toying with our horror movie expectations by having the empty hallway (zombies?  post-apocalypse?) suddenly clutter with staff, whom don’t seem alarmed by Dora’s presence; everything, then, is normal.  And yet the waiting camera eye and our lead’s unnerved look tell us otherwise.  Cut to titles.  Now color seeps back into the frame and Dora and boyfriend Jace (Luke Bilyk) are lying in a field, chatting.  So there’s your rebellious teen – having a pretty normal chat.  No snogging or drug doing or fuck-authority-ing.  He even rags on her a bit for cutting class.  These characters are nice; they’re not A students, but they’re not the Hellions of the title.  And Dora’s off to the clinic to receive her news, delivered sympathetically and without judgment from Doctor Henry (Rossif Sutherland).

From here on out the movie begins to mess with us in the best of ways.  It’s Halloween night, so while Dora waits at home, figuring how to tell her boyfriend the news, Trick R’ Treaters show up – particularly some kids in some terrifying costumes (for better or worse reminiscent of Sam from Trick R’ Treat) – and then Hellions slowly starts to descend into its own tricks.  The kids increase in numbers, begin pranking the house; the color filter goes violet; Dora starts hearing voices.  The threat ante is upped without question, which is a welcome change from the usual bait-and-switch these films will try to pull when we know something bad is just waiting, and our little Hellions’ goal becomes clear: they want that kid.

McDonald lets inventive editing (Duff Smith) and an amazing score (Todor Kobakov, Ian LeFeuvre) guide us through the film’s increasingly abstract design, stitched together by Dora’s attempts to survive the assault, or the night, or to escape the house…  It admittedly starts to lose its own thread a bit when the timeline starts getting toyed with, rewinding and fast-forwarding to an extent that diminishes the nightmare/dream aspect and moves us a bit too much toward surreality, but the film gets back to business before it really hits its breaking point, further doing us the favor of remaining true to its genre by having the heroine discover a means by which to fight back against her aggressors…

Chloe is perfect in the lead, communicating the whirlwind emotions of teenagerhood mostly through her responses to cell phone texts or others’ words; when shit starts to hit the fan, her attempts to process it all are equally well acted and convincing.

Now, yes, even moving past my excusing the movie for any potential agenda, there’s still some disappointment to the hand-waving of the conclusion; whatever your interpretation, it would’ve been nice to play things out slightly more linearly for various reasons.  However, I wasn’t wholly against the wild editing experiments offered up in the last quarter of the flick.  The combination of the sound mixing and music and visuals made it fascinating to watch, even if it might’ve caused some pacing hiccups.  (Peter Strickland should take note.)  Hellions is a welcome entry into the pregnancy horror genre, and another reminder that, though there might only be a few true possible variations on a theme – for any given film genre – there are still plenty of great movies to be made and experienced.