Pedophobic fever dreams: HELLIONS (2015)

I am not good with children. That maternal instinct--the one society will quickly tell you all women have sooner or later--has yet to manifest itself in any way. Kids just intimidate me; their bizarre social skills and complete lack of self-awareness leave my delicate social graces in shambles and I simply freeze up. Anyone who knows me will quickly tell you I'd sooner light myself on fire than be left alone with a kid, and those are the same people who will gleefully hand me a baby at the first opportunity just to watch me squirm. (My friends are mean.) Of course there are choice exceptions, like my nieces or the occasional tiny angelic bookworm who comes into the library where I work, but for the most part I am best left around adults.

Horror movies have only encouraged this anxiety by bringing my nightmares to life on the screen. Creepy kids are always a surefire way to unnerve your audience, and there are few movies that haven't used it against us. There are the kids who see things (The Shining, The Others, The Sixth Sense), the kids that serve as gateways for evil forces (Poltergeist, Pet Sematary), or the kids who are pure evil incarnate (The Omen, The Ring). Even further, and sadly less often, there are the movies that take on the horror of motherhood itself--the invasion and harvesting of one's body for another life (Rosemary's Baby, The Brood, Lords of Salem), the sacrifices one would make for their own child (Grace), and even the possibility of rejecting the one thing you're supposed to cherish most in this world (The Babadook). The movies have only validated my fears, encouraging me that I have made the right decision in remaining steadfastly childless.

But don't worry, I'm sure one day I'll change my mind.

I won't.

As it is, I love creepy kid movies because they are one of the few elements in horror I haven't been completely desensitized to. You can only see so many decapitations before they lose their magic, but those girls jumping rope in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies will always send chills down your spine.

So it didn't take long for me to spot Hellions on Netflix. From what I had heard, this movie had everything I like: spooky kids in crude masks, home invasion, all set on Halloween. I am a big fan of director Bruce McDonald's previous film Pontypool, with its claustrophobic one-room staging and unnerving twist on the zombie apocalypse. It couldn't be more perfect!

It's a Canadian Trick r' Treat!

Quick story: Netflix tried its best to warn me against this movie. The one-star rating wasn't promising, but I dove in anyway under the promise of Blumhouse.com's recommendation. About 15 minutes in, the movie suddenly stopped and returned to the description screen, as if to say, "You've seen enough." I hit play, and about 30 minutes later, it happened again, like, "Okay, there's still time to bail out on this." I grabbed my WiiU controller, screamed "You don't know me, Netflix!" at the TV, and resumed playing once again. In hindsight, I probably could have stopped when it told me to and had a better experience.

The plot is simple (spoilers, sort of): After finding out she's pregnant, 17-year-old Dora spends Halloween night alone when some trick-or-treaters begin attacking her home. Over the course of the night, the children outside become more and more violent--banging on doors, egging windows, quickly dispensing with anyone who could possibly help Dora. The house itself seemingly gets sucked into Hell, and it becomes evident that these creatures have come for the baby. The climax reveals itself in a series of feverish time loops, quick cuts of nightmare imagery, dreams within dreams, and wake-up fake-outs. The film itself ends on a loop, the last sequence being the very place the film began--Dora walking dreamlike down a hospital hallway to gaze longingly at the newborns in the maternity ward.

There's also a weird, roundabout Shining reference somewhere in there.

It should be said up front that this movie is all about atmosphere. It's a perfect Halloween movie, thick with that chilled October feeling like Trick r' Treat or Halloween III. It takes place in one of these sleepy small towns that only seem to ever exist in the movies, where Halloween is treated with the same reverence and decadence as Christmas. Falling leaves, decorations, trick-or-treaters, and jack-o-lanterns abound. There's even a broadcast of the local Halloween parade! Why can't I live here?!

Once the terror starts, the atmosphere only gets more intense. We descend into Hell by way of camera filter and wind machine, the world bathed in a pink and grey haze and harsh gusts of wind that gives the feeling an otherworldly hurricane was about to strike. The power's out, the phones are dead, and who knows when Mom will come home? The child-demons get closer to the house with hatchets and their nursery rhyme death hymns on full blast. Pumpkins come busting through windows, and later an endless field of pumpkins begin to explode like land mines. All the while, Dora is stumbling around the house in a blood-stained angel costume trying to believe that this is actually happening. It's just nuts, and I have to give it an A for eye candy.

The plot....I've pretty much explained everything there is to that.

Hey look! Robert Patrick!

I'd rather not get into the ending, or rather, what is implied by the 3-4 endings we get in a row before the credits finally roll. We are presented with so many "it was a dream--NO IT WASN'T" sequences near the end, that it's fair to say the entire movie was all a dream. It's unfortunate that the "dream ending" is so lauded in popular culture because it isn't always a cop-out. Sometimes the entirety of a movie can be one long metaphoric journey, and in this case, I'll accept that ending.

I will say that the "unwanted pregnancy nightmare" is great for an atmospheric horror movie, projecting Dora's anxieties to us exactly as she sees them in a trippy nightmarish haze. Besides being young, we see she is naturally unnerved by kids (like someone else I know), so the thought of being a mother manifests itself in nasty little brats attacking her house, blood gushing from between her legs, and grotesque abominations clawing out of her belly. And even worse, despite having people she can call, no one can help her. She alone must face this terror. That's a pretty good metaphor for teen pregnancy if I've ever seen one.

If only they hadn't tried to weave in an Antichrist angle into all that. Then it just becomes nonsense.

Overall, Hellions doesn't quite deserve its one-star rating on Netflix. It's got rich atmosphere that pulls you in and lets you deep into the world. Unfortunately, the thin plot does somehow elbow its way into the imagery, leading to a baffling finish.

Either way, I'll probably be watching it again around Halloween. Only, maybe next time I'll bail out early around the halfway mark. (You win again, Netflix, you smug bitch.)




Images come from the film Hellions and are property of Storyteller Pictures and Whizbang Films.