Movies
[Review] Halloween Horror ‘Hellions’ Is Unsettling, Not Terrifying
Reviewed out of Sundance by Fred Topel
Last year, Aaron Paul had a movie at Sundance called Hellion. I never saw it, but I assume Hellions is the sequel because that’s the rules. When you pluralize the title, it’s the sequel in which there are even more Hellions than the first film!
Dora (Chloe Rose) is home alone on Halloween. When three kids show up at her door in masks, she thinks they are regular trick or treaters. Despite Dora giving them candy, they come back to keep terrorizing her. At first it’s normal stuff like egging and pumpkin smashing, but it evolves into a much stranger assault from demons who clearly have supernatural powers.
First of all, the three masks look way better than anything from Halloween: Season of the Witch, so in your face, 1982’s Halloween III. They are clearly the work of prosthetic craftsman. If they were available for purchase in stores, they could cost more than kids or their parents could afford, so that might be the first indicator that these are not regular kids.
Hellions gradually transitions into nightmare logic, where the rules of time and space don’t apply. The color shifts to sepia, we see kaleidoscope imagery, and Dora ends up in a completely strange world for the climax. Editing even changes the logic of continuity. The lack of logic is always the scariest part of nightmares anyway, that you can’t even count on basic physics to apply, so it’s a good approach to the film’s horror.
That makes Hellions certainly unsettling, if not terrifying. If Halloween III were more like Hellions it could’ve worked. It delivers on the promise of kids terrorizing adults. Dora is an older teenager, but the Officer Corman (Robert Patrick) comes to her aid and he’s not much help against them either.
Director Bruce McDonald elevates his craft exponentially. Where Pontypool dealt with an auditory fear, Hellions allows him to manipulate all of our senses. It is a promising debut from first time feature writer Pascal Trottier, taking logic out of the equation. While maybe not as memorable as some of the other Sundance creature features, Hellions will still give you a good scare when you’re able to see it.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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