By Nia Edwards-Behi
I’ve briefly raved about Hellions before on this site, in my preview of FrightFest 2015. Well, now the film’s set to hit home-viewing, just in time for Halloween, and I’m really looking forward to many people picking it up and seeing it for themselves, because more than anything, it’s a film that makes me want to talk about it.
Dora (Chloe Rose) is your typical teenager. She makes Halloween party plans with her boyfriend, before having to run off to attend a doctor’s appointment. Dora’s plans are duly dashed when the doctor informs her that she’s pregnant. Devastated and confused, Dora decides she’s staying home on Halloween night, until her mum tells her to go have fun. Dora gets dressed up, puts on a brave face, and waits for her boyfriend to come pick her up. Her waiting is interrupted by frightening and violent trick-or-treaters, who signal the start of an increasingly surreal and terrifying ordeal for Dora.
To make it quite clear: I blummin’ love Hellions. I fully acknowledge its faults, however, and I suppose it’s only right I get those out the way first. Not all of the dialogue works, for example, and the film certainly does get incoherent as it goes on. I rather enjoyed that tone and sense of confusion, but critically speaking it might have benefitted from being tighter. I like the surreal journey that Dora ends up taking, but I was more than well on-board with her as character from the get go. If you’ve not been quite so bowled over, then that incoherence can suddenly be a much bigger issue. The biggest weakness in the film, and my god it pains me to say it, is the really ham-fisted, for-the-sake-of-it inclusion of Robert Patrick’s sheriff character. There’s nothing wrong with Patrick’s performance, but he’s just superfluous to requirements. While his character adds a sense of mythology to the terror experienced by Dora, it’s not really necessary, and just ends up buggering up the pacing of the film. His appearance might have been better limited to the same sort of role as the doctor, earlier in the film: another metaphorical character who disappears as quickly as he appears during Dora’s ordeal.
The film is undoubtedly all about Dora, though. It’s refreshing to see a film so preoccupied with a teenage female central character in a way that’s interesting and nuanced, and Chloe Rose gives a wonderful performance to match. The film is very much an exercise in metaphor, and while it’s not particularly subtle, it’s very well done. Characters from Dora’s life – her boyfriend, mother, doctor, friendly local sheriff – appear in her hazy ordeal and all are thwarted in attempts to help her, or are unhelpful all together. Dora’s fears and concerns about her pregnancy are all writ large through the terrorisation inflicted upon her by the demonic trick or treaters who appear at her door and invade her house. She is, in various and different ways, left alone by all the people she might seek support from, and spends the film isolated and very afraid.
Like Keri’s previously outlined, the trope of suddenly making an in-peril female character pregnant is one of the biggest annoyances in horror films. It’s refreshing, then, that with Hellions we have a film that approaches the subject head-on, rather than it being some sort of tacked-on twist. The film is also very much about Dora as a person, and her fears, rather than directly, necessarily, more about the pregnancy or the baby. This isn’t about the devil, or a demon baby, or a monstrous mother, it’s a film about a young, unexpectedly expecting, woman, and I believe Bruce MacDonald does a great job of exploring some of the fears, both rational and irrational, that she might experience.
But does the film work outside of its metaphorical concerns? For me, yes. Hellions is a great Halloween film (and indeed a great horror film) because it uses the Halloween setting as a jump-off point for a much more broadly horrifying subject. The trick or treaters who terrorise Dora are never fully explained – are they demonic children? tiny demonic adults? are they even demons? All we do know is that they will stop at nothing to get at Dora’s baby. If I were to offer an interpretation of what the trick or treaters represent in this film, then it’s most definitely the broad societal pressure that often puts unborn children ahead of the wants, needs and welfare of their would-be mothers. Their repeated ‘blood for baby’ chant sent shivers down my spine, and the repeated disembodied question, ‘can you hear me, Dora?’ lends a wonderful ambiguity to the film’s ending which will no doubt frustrate others as much as it delighted me.
Hellions might not be traditionally frightening, but it’s wonderfully atmospheric. Once Dora’s ordeal begins in earnest, a pink haze descends on her world and the image we see. The score complements this, the sing-songy main theme – which is both evocative of the film’s themes, and reassuringly traditionally Halloweeny – appears throughout the film, alongside synth-driven distortions. As the film goes on, it becomes increasingly abstract and dialogue free, and it certainly loses its more traditional sense of its white-picket, small-town Halloween setting. For me, that makes the film stand out, and I genuinely enjoy the weird direction it takes.
I’ve already watched Hellions a few times, and enjoyed it each go. It’s the sort of film I’m enjoying repeat-viewing, and appreciating new things on each go. As such, I declare Hellions a resounding TREAT, as it offers a visually and thematically interesting take on the Halloween setting.