HELLIONS is a Nightmarish Halloween Horror Experience - Sundance 2015 Review
Finally: a dark and twisted full-on horror film at Sundance that I could enjoy! Hellions is a psychedelic thrill ride of insanity. I love a good horror flick that plays with your head, and this one does a fun job with that. It also offered some good old-fashioned scares.
One of the things I liked most about this story is that the events in the film unfold on Halloween day during a blood moon year. I love movies that revolve around the devilish holiday, and the story is set in a town that is apparently known for its Halloween pumpkin celebrations. It starts out with a 17-year-old girl named Dora (Chloe Rose) who finds out that she's pregnant. Not long after finding out this shocking news, bad creepy things start to happen to her. It starts out with her hearing voices, and then later, while she stays at home waiting for her boyfriend to come pick her up for a party, terrifying costumed kids start to show up at the house.
These kids aren't normal kids, though. They are more like evil-ass demons called Hellions, and they want to take the girl's newborn baby along with her soul. She does everything she can to fight back and protect herself, and it was refreshing to see her make smarter decisions than characters in other horror movies have made. She goes through a nightmarish hell in the process.
I had such a good time watching her take on these villainous bastard creatures. At one point she is helped by the town sheriff, who is awesomely played by Robert Patrick. I always enjoy seeing him in movies - unfortunately, he wasn't in this one nearly enough.
The visual aspects of this were pretty freakin' cool. There was a lot of experimental stuff going on, but it did a good job of taking the audience into the maddening nightmare that Dora found herself in. I think some of the scenes went on for a little too long, but I get what the director was trying to accomplish, and it was some pretty trippy stuff.
I also loved the look of the child demons in the film. They wore these eerie and unsettling old-school costume designs. They were some of the coolest Halloween inspired costumes that I've seen on film. The movie Trick r' Treat did a great job with that kind of stuff as well. This movie just had a way more surreal vibe to it.
This is a pretty hardcore horror film. There's definitely an audience out there for a movie like this, but not everyone is going to like it. Just because I did, doesn't mean you will. But if you're a fan of the horror genre then you owe it to yourself to check it out.
The movie was directed by Bruce McDonald from a script written by Pascal Trottier. Here's a little description about the film:
It is Halloween night in the town of Waterford, the so-called Pumpkin Capital of the World. Alone at home, teenager Dora Vogel is about to have a very long night. Free to roam undetected among the small town's trick-or-treaters, a group of masked demonic beings knock on unsuspecting Dora's door. Before long, she is cut off from the outside world, under siege in her isolated home for reasons she does not understand. Alone in the dark, Dora will need to defend both her body and her soul from the relentless evil beings known as hellions.
Twenty-three years after screening Highway 61 at the Sundance Film Festival, director Bruce McDonald returns to the Park City at Midnight section with a bag full of devilish tricks guaranteed to leave our late-night crowd in screams. McDonald brilliantly pushes a highly cinematic visual and audio landscape of Halloween horror iconography into frightening new realms of terror. You’ve been warned!