10/30: Spring

As has been the trend this year, I'm still behind. Yay. So here's my movie from yesterday:

10/30

Nothing says "day before Halloween" better than a monster romance film. Enter: Spring, today's horror film. Another one from the damn creative minds of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (directors of The Endless, one of my favorites from this month), Spring is a beautifully weird film. A young man's (maybe a "young bro" would be more appropriate) mother has died of cancer so he decides to escape to Italy. While there he meets a strange but beautiful woman who he falls deeply for. She is resistant at first but eventually gives in and the two start up a romance. Things take a turn though when it's revealed that the woman is some sort of Lovecraftian primordial werewolf-vampire-lizard-squid monster thing. 

Exactly, hippie fellow.

Yeah, so ya know, not optimal relationship building material. Unless you're, ya know, the monster from The Shape of Water or something. But the two just make it work darn it, and that's the beauty of this story.

Honestly, other than being about a monster lady, Spring is more of a romance film than a horror flick. It's really brilliant in that way: despite having a monster at the center, the film is beautifully shot and told. It's tale of romance against the odds, about how a bro from California can find love with a 2,000 year old monster. It's damn cute, if you ask me. Benson and Moorhead show with Spring their unique voice for horror tales and telling them in a way that doesn't rely on the dark jumps we're so accustomed to.

All that said, my major complaint: the explanation for the monster. Look, I get it: it's not about understanding, and in fact I think that Benson and Moorhead set up the explanation that way. The explanation for why this 2,000 year old lady can exist and why she can transform into all these different monsters doesn't matter as much as just accepting it for what is: a cool monster film. But, to be honest, I need more than just stem cells and every twenty years or some shit. Things are left too up to the imagination and for a monster who is so intriguing I want to know the why. Also, pet peeve that doesn't greatly affect my viewing of the film, but still needs to be said: how does a 2,000 year old being not figure out ways to prepare for the time that her body turns into different monsters? It seems that after so many thousands of years you wouldn't be surprised anymore by you transformations into a weird monster thing.

With Spring Benson and Moorhead show their brilliance but in a less refined way than what they reached with The Endless. This is their ideas and horror lens not fully realized yet but showing all the signs of where they will get to. I'm excited to see more from these guys.

8.5/10