By Ben Bussey
My fellow horror fans, we have a firm contender for the best worst film of 2015. Just in case we need to make the distinction, I don’t mean to say Some Kind of Hate is a flat-out bad movie; those are the ones that tend to just leave you utterly cold and numb, do nothing you haven’t seen innumerable times already, and have you checking your watch every 30 seconds praying it’s been half an hour. They’re films that leave you struggling to find anything worth saying about them afterwards, and we see way too many of those around these parts as it is. But a truly great bad movie – in the tradition of Plan 9 From Outer Space, Troll 2, Birdemic and (so I’m told as I’ve never actually seen it) The Room – those are not films that have been lazily, cynically thrown together by filmmakers with no real interest in their work. The great bad movies are the work of people who really care, really want to make a mark and really have something to say. More often than not there are the seeds of a good idea there, and certainly concerted efforts are made to create something unique that truly stands apart from the crowd – it’s just that the end result winds up standing apart for all the wrong reasons.
I’m not sure any film this year has wrong-footed me the way Some Kind Of Hate has. For the first 30 minutes or so, I was genuinely gripped and impressed. We’re introduced to a troubled, introverted goth loner teen from a broken home, constantly set upon by others, struggling to stand up for himself in the face of persistent mockery and persecution. Finally he snaps, strikes back at a preppy bully – and winds up being held at fault by the authorities whilst the bully, presumably, faces no repercussions. This is an ugly scenario which sadly rings true to real life; a friend of mine at high school went through much the same thing, and that combination of the school’s ignorance and the baseless spite of the bullies leaves a mark that can still sting even twenty years later (and we didn’t even have to worry about the internet back then). High profile anti-bullying campaigns of late have brought the subject very much onto the global stage, and as such Some Kind Of Hate initially seems like a very timely and potent piece of filmmaking with a strong message for this generation’s youth. And I do stress initially…
After striking back at his bully, our young protagonist Lincoln (Ronen Rubinstein) winds up at Mind’s Eye Academy, a reform school out in the wilderness which seems somewhat unorthdox to English eyes but I can only assume is de rigueur in California; there’s an emphasis on meditation, yoga and talking about feelings. Not that there’s any indication that this approach works for the latest crop of inmates, as when word gets out of the violence that got him there, Lincoln promptly finds himself targeted by bullies once again, and facing the dilemma of whether he should try to fight back, or just take the abuse. Up to this point, Some Kind of Hate isn’t making too many missteps; we may have some rather stock characters in Lincoln’s conveniently harmless roommate Isaac (Spencer Breslin) and two-dimensional dreamgirl Kaitlin (Grace Phipps), and we might wonder why a kid with an iron cross tattoo on his neck is playing beta to black bully Willie (Maestro Harrell), but still, the film paints a tense, even harrowing portrait of how it feels to be bullied.
But then, the horror movie conventions kick in. Characters become conveniently isolated, left doing jobs in quiet areas by themselves, there are the standard little noises in the background, the “who’s there?” moments – and then the murders start happening. Next thing you know, Lincoln’s seeing a ghost – and we soon come to learn that this is the ghost of a girl named Moira (Sierra McCormick), who was also the victim of cruel, relentless bullying at the academy some years past. The harsh, comparative realism of the early scenes now takes a back seat to fairly standard modern ghost story tropes, replete with those always-dull scenes of characters doing historical research to uncover some horrible secret. It’s all a bit dull, and by this point Some Kind of Hate starts to feel a let down.
However, by the time the final act kicks in, the tone has shifted even further. We’ve gone from hard-edged naturalism, to modern horror cliche, to… well… absolute batshit insanity. Actually, ‘insane’ might not be the best descriptor. This isn’t a word I’m generally that comfortable using, but by the last thirty minutes or so, Some Kind of Hate is well and truly stupid. The action amps up into arch melodrama, with a succession of sequences surely intended to be terrifying, paying off for the tension of earlier scenes, but which instead wind up laugh-out-loud hilarious. We’ve got horrendously overwritten dialogue delivered in a histrionic fashion and absurd plot twists aplenty: declarations of love bursting out unconvincingly at totally inappropriate moments; a villain who really needs to learn when to stop with the screaming, the crying and the impassioned monologues.
Most glaring of all, our supernatural antagonist has perhaps the silliest way of killing her victims imaginable. I suppose I should label this a SPOILER, but… ever see that episode of Red Dwarf when they wind up on a prison space station which immediately reverses the effect of any crime, so if you hit someone you only wind up hitting yourself? Well, that’s essentially how it is for Moira – harm she does to herself simultaneously effects other people. However, where Red Dwarf of course played that idea for quite natural laughs, Some Kind of Hate seems to think they can play it for bona fide scares. Perhaps it made sense on paper; Moira cuts herself, and those cuts then appear on her intended victim, making a statement on self-harm or whatever. But in practice, it just gets ridiculous. I mean, there’s an actual scene in here when, in order to finish off her victim, Moira repeatedly bashes her own head against a wall… and at no point did anyone involved in the production of this film think to make like Graham Chapman and say, “stop that! It’s silly!”
As is surely apparent by now, I can’t exactly concur with the Fangoria quote on the official artwork above declaring Some Kind of Hate to be ‘the next contemporary horror classic.’ This is a deeply, nay fatally flawed film, which is on the one hand a terrible disappointment given the promise of the first act – but, on the other hand, does warrant a sort-of recommendation, because it does end up hugely entertaining, just probably not in the way its makers intended. And to my mind, winding up so-bad-it’s-almost-good is a hell of a lot better than just winding up boring as shit like so many other low budget indie horror movies. This is a film filled with good intentions, with hints of a worthwhile message, but the main impression it’s bound to leave you with is that the filmmakers responsible need to take a good long look at themselves before they think about getting behind the camera again.
Some Kind of Hate will be available for VOD and download via FrightFest Presents from 19th October.