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Title: #Horror (2015)
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| Credited cast: | |||
| Chloë Sevigny | ... |
Alex Cox
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| Timothy Hutton | ... |
Dr. Michael White
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| Balthazar Getty | ... |
Harry Cox
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| Stella Schnabel | ... |
Jamie
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| Sadie Seelert | ... |
Sam
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| Haley Murphy | ... |
Cat White
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| Bridget McGarry | ... |
Sofia Cox
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Blue Lindeberg | ... |
Ava
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| Mina Sundwall | ... |
Francesca
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| Emma Adler | ... |
Georgie
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| Annabelle Dexter-Jones | ... |
Molly
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| Lydia Hearst | ... |
Lisa
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| Brenna Perez | ... |
Reporter
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| Jessica Blank | ... |
Mom
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| Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
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Ted Christensen | ... |
Ted
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#HORROR is a film about the lives of six young women, Sam, Georigie, Sofia, Francesca, Cat and Eva played by our young ensemble of emerging actresses. Their world is one of money, success, ease and decadence. This is a film about the HORROR of cyberbullying. This film is a integral insight on the pressure that girls take on as they grow in a world that is increasingly dependent on the promotion and attention that social media platforms provide yet prevent bullying. as well as the roles that parents must play regarding controlling their child's use of the internet and bullying plays such a terrifying role in society. These young woman are telling this story inside a glass mansion, filled with millions of dollars of artwork, as if they were living in a contemporary museum with artworks including works by Urs Fischer, Rob Pruitt, Dan Colen, Franz West, Steven Shearer.
Literally everything in #Horror is larger than life, from the over-stylized Candy Crush social media mock-up app that regularly splatters the screen with likes and corpses, to the impossible-to-read hyper-cut opening credits, to the manic overwrought performances from the entire cast.
You can read the film as blunted, over-the-top satire, which it only rarely achieves. Alternately, you can view it as a throwback to the old-fashioned not-so-good anonymous slasher films of the early '80s where the only one you really could cheer for was the killer. Only in this case, you'd be rooting for a child mass-murderer, which lends a discomfiting air to the entire outing, making satire the only tolerable path to choose. Unlike other teen torture porn (like Megan is Missing, for example) the deaths aren't drawn out. They're quick and for the most part forgettable. In the case of #Horror, that's probably a good thing.
#Horror takes place in a chic glass cage in snowy Connecticut (Tim Hutton's house, actually, who plays an outraged parent who may or may not be taking his career as a plastic surgeon in slightly more creative directions). Blonde, vapid Sophia (Bridget McGarry) and her five besties are having a sleepover in said mansion. All the usual slasher-movie archetypes are there --- good girl Sam (Sadie Seelert), glamorous Ava (Blue Lindeberg), Bulemia girl Georgie (Emma Adler), Anorexia girl Francesca (Mina Sundwall) --- and well-known cyber-bully champion Cat (Haley Murphy), whose clueless but well-meaning dad is played by Hutton.
Only thing is, ALL these girls are really bullies, and one of the few things #Horror doesn't hyperbolize is the way preteen girls mercilessly torment each other, at least a quintet this disturbed and on doses of psychoactive drugs that would render an elephant comatose. The performances aren't very riveting (note the Acting Coach in the end credits) but their cruelty often is. It's often more disturbing than the actual bloodshed.
#Horror does have some virtuoso pictorial moments --- the outlandish modern art that decks the house (quite good, actually, but nothing you'd want to actually LIVE with) lends a sinister atmosphere and the bevy of grotesque masks lying around add a nice level of depravity. Watching the girls stage a mock floor show with them provides one of the few indelible moments.
But the real moments of tenseness come when what's on screen approaches reality. Timothy Hutton looks like he's having a blast when he confronts the callous quintet while brandishing a butcher knife, and the warped priorities of the adults aren't so far away from reality that you don't wince a little. Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch for Sophie's mom Alex (a scene-shredding Chloe Sevigny) to let the girls loose on millions of dollars of jewelry but her own self-indulgent, lethargic attitudes aren't far from the authentic mark. You sense that the parents are the real psychotics in Subkoff's absurdity play.
Contrary to a lot of the reviews that completely trash #Horror, the film is eerily subversive in its own way, when it's not bludgeoning you to death with its supposed "seriousness." If you're a horror fan, frankly I'd skip it. It's not scary in any traditional, expected way. But it's strangely satisfying when it does on occasion reach its lofty ambitions.
I saw this at a double feature with the reserved, though equally absurdist Carol Morley film "The Falling," and it was an interesting juxtaposition. Both films tackle young girls, angst, and peer-pressure in offhand, often genre-busting ways, especially when you compare 1969 to 2015 in terms of the tools of self-destruction that are available.