Spring ****
Dirs: Justin Benson,
Aaron Moorhead. With: Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker, Vanessa Bednar, Shane
Brady. 109 mins. Cert: 15
Writer-directors
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead here offer one of the year’s foremost genre
discoveries, although Spring’s exact
form is revealed only belatedly: at every level, some shapeshifting is
involved. The erratic trajectory of smalltown drifter Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci),
absconding to Europe after a police charge, initially suggests a dread return
to Hostel territory. Yet it’s a
feint: the filmmakers, forever more serious than sniggering around death,
instead tack onto an altogether scenic alternative route. Holing up in rural
Bologna, our boy crosses paths with mysterious geneticist Louise (Nadia
Hilker), and their courtly romance transforms the film entirely, each scene
nudging the characters further beyond predator/prey archetypes and into almost
impossibly vivacious landscapes. Long before its unusual,
Lovecraft-via-Linklater third act, in which the lovers try to work a situation
out rather than put a stake through it,
Spring becomes genuinely regenerative: a monster movie with a heart and
soul to go alongside its tentacles.
Spring is now playing in selected cinemas. A longer version of this review can be found here.
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