TIFF 2015 Review | ‘Hellions’ Offers Tricks and Treats

Once you’re an adult, every Halloween starts to feel like a siege. You sit in your house or apartment, trying to read a book or god forbid watch a movie while every five minutes your doorbell rings, and little monsters demand you pay tribute with bite-sized Hershey bars. It’s a tolerable imposition one night out of the year; let’s just hope that these kids never realize they could probably bilk fully grown strangers out of hard-earned candy every night, provided they just got violent enough.

That set-up – homicidal trick ‘r’ treaters – probably would have been enough to carry a decent horror movie on its own. Fortunately director Bruce McDonald has more on his mind in Hellions, an eery new thriller starring Chloe Rose as Dora, a seventeen-year-old girl who learns she is pregnant on Halloween. As she reels from the news and suffers all manner of internal torment, her external torment begins: now her house is under siege by mysterious children in homemade masks, and they don’t want Baby Ruths. They want her baby.

One might imagine a film in which Dora boards up windows and sets out booby traps and becomes thoroughly empowered via a spectral Rio Bravo. One might be surprised then to discover just how hallucinogenic McDonald gets in Hellions. This film is less about action and more about anguish, putting the Dora’s personal struggle out there into the world with harsh pinks and vicious taunts. The striking imagery, set largely against the backdrop of an otherworldly blood moon, gives the events of Hellions a perversely womblike quality. It’s fitting but icky.

Indeed, “fitting but icky” may be a great way to describe Hellions overall. As a suspense thriller, McDonald’s film eschews conventional escalation and tension. The broadness of the horror reveals itself earlier than expected and it doesn’t build to a big action set piece. Instead, Hellions languishes in undesirable thoughts and moody isolation. Perfectly apropos to Dora’s state of mind, but not always a fitting contrast to those fleeting moments when the film tries to be badass and makes Dora craft her own demon-killing shotgun shells.

If the purpose of a horror movie is to be horrific, then Hellions gets the job done. It is an unsettling film that subverts multiple expectations and stages a relatable and discomforting drama in an environment of uncertainty and violence. But clunkiness is also on the menu, and the film’s efficacy as popcorn entertainment may be a matter for some debate. It is obvious that Hellions wants to be fun, but mostly it just succeeds at being hellish. Fortunately, for at least one night out of the year, that’s what some of us want.

Now get off my lawn.

Image via IFC Midnight

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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