VOD Review: #Horror (2015)

We applaud first time director Tara Subkoff for trying to make a unique movie that offers commentary about cyberbullying, but overall, #Horror was #Horrible.

This movie is supposed to be a Slasher flick, I suppose, but in the end it's really no more than a mean-spirited remake of The Babysitters Club, except in this one, the babysitters are all socially retarded asshole kids who get stabbed to death at the end.

It also may be a live-action version of the game Candy Crush. And one of the worst movie that either Timothy Hutton or Chloe Sevigny have ever starred in.

The movie centers around a group of 12-year-old privileged girls, who gather at a mansion to have a sleepover. This sleepover mostly involves calling each other names like "Fat Tranny" and viciously insulting each other, but hey, maybe that's what pre-teen girls are into these days. And of course every single thing that they do has to be uploaded online, because what is life without having your posts liked on the Twitters and Facebooks of the world?

WHY?

When the alcoholic mother of the girl who is hosting the sleepover leaves them alone to "go do her," the bullying between them escalates to the point where one girls is told to leave. A house full of young girls left all alone, and one wandering int he wintry woods by herself, add up to bad things to come... mainly because there's someone who wants to kill them all.

Frustration ensues.

WILL SHE SURVIVE?

I get that Tara Subkoff was trying to make a statement about cyberbullyng, bullying in general, and how the younger generation is obsessed with the world of Social Media (likes, Tweets, favorites, etc...), but damn, couldn't she have done so within the confines of a better movie? Or even a more watchable one?

I'll go ahead and give her credit for going for something that was completely out of the box with this movie, at least in a visual sense. It's definitely stylish, and it certainly plays by its own rules, for better or worse. I'll also give her credit for making a movie in which a bunch of younger kids get killed on-screen, because that's a tough thing to attempt, even in a satirical movie like this. If nothing else, this movie had balls.

YEAH, SHE'S 12.

#Horror was a grating experience for us though. The story itself wasn't bad, and the point(s) that the movie was tying to make were absolutely valid, but everything was a total mess: the way that the movie is edited; the random, Candy Crush-like graphics that popped up on screen every two minutes; the lack of any sort of incident until the very end; the slow, almost non-existent plot; the over-the-top and purposefully silly acting by Timothy Hutton... it felt more like an artistic experiment than it did a movie.

And then we have the characters...

I can't remember the last time I saw a movie where I wanted all of its characters to die painfully from the get-go like I did with this one. The fact that most of the main characters are 12-years-old makes it even worse, because we're not usually interested in seeing a bunch of kids killed on screen, but the girls in this movie were so abhorrent and frustratingly aggravating, that their impending deaths were all we had to hang on to as the movie wore on.

SO BRAVE. SO UNIQUE. SO PRETENTIOUS.

Honestly, the first hour and fifteen minutes of this movie is little more than a group of 12-year-old girls bullying, harassing, and generally being shitty to each other. Illustrating their horrible behavior towards one another, and how Social Media fits into it all, was the point of the movie, but after 10 minutes of that we were contemplating scratching our eyes out and/or hitting mute.

And when the killing did start (in earnest at least), it was far too late to save things. At least the last 15-minutes or so were a bit more exciting than everything that came before it.

Lots of ideas look good on paper but just don't work in practice, and #Horror is surely an example of that.

WE KNOW, KID. WE CRIED TOO.

I'm honestly being generous by not giving #Horror a lower grade, but as horrible as it was for us to watch, it's not without merit. We applaud the movie for making a statement about bullying, and the dumbing-down of America by way of Social Media addiction, but for the most part though, this movie is little more than an exercise in style over substance. At least that's how it felt to us.

Some will dig it, but for most Horror fans in general, #Horror will feel like watching someone scratch their nails on a chalkboard for 90 minutes. #NoThankYou #RentSomethingElse

D

#Horror is available now on VOD.

The Incomparable Chloe Sevigny.