Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) has had it rough recently. His father passed away from a heart attack, and his mother was shortly thereafter diagnosed with cancer. Evan dropped out of college so he could return home to care for her, and as Spring opens, she passes away too. Adrift, Evan stumbles into an altercation that costs him his job and puts him on the outs with both law enforcement and some local thugs. He needs an out, a clean slate, so he impulsively jumps on a flight to Italy. There, he becomes entranced by a beautiful young woman, Louise (Nadia Hilker). Beyond the physical attraction, Evan is simply overjoyed to have finally found a human connection.
Now if only Louise was human…
Going any further into the plot would be a tremendous disservice to Spring, and to the moving and unnerving ride created by co-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead. What Louise is, what she’s after, and how Evan fits into that plan, these are items that are carefully teased out over the course of the film’s running time. Benson is credited with the film’s script, and he does an expert job at carefully laying out the film’s game.
But perhaps what is most impressive about Spring is how secondary the narrative ultimately is to the experience. Given the extended sequences of the pair wandering through luminous European sequences exchanging extended dialogue, many have already made the comparison with Richard Linklater (including Richard Linklater) and Spring is absolutely worthy to be considered alongside that panethon. And while trailers and posters emphasize the body horror aspect of the film, the emphasis of Spring falls squarely on the characters and the way their blossoming love throws both for a loop. He’s an open wound, vulnerable to all manner of love and pain, while she has closed off those parts of herself long ago. Taylor Puccci and Hilker make a meal of Benson’s script, diving into both the laugh-out-loud dialogue and the more hard-hitting pathos. Hilker in particular proves to be absolutely fearless here, baring body and soul to display the twisted, but true, heart of Louise. She may be a monster, but all the best monsters have souls, and Louise is at once a romantic vision, a terrifying threat, and a scared and desperate human being. Hilker hits all these notes, and understands how to make each one feel in concordance with the rest, so she isn’t just playing an empty spank fantasy of a villain or sexual conquest. Genre movies could benefit from more female characters with this much depth.
Really, genre movies could do well with writing even half as good as Spring’s. The film clocks in at just under two hours, which would seem long for most monster movies. Not here. The film rushes by on a flood of the leads’ instant chemistry and the way the script and filmmaking are constantly pushing forward the narrative and emotional story. Even with very little ‘incident’ the film never feels especially slow. Whenever the romance has hit a break, we get a fresh batch of horror or mythology, and whenever those toys are put away we get to spend more time with these characters, who are an absolute joy to watch.
I’m talking a lot about the characters and central relationship, but that should not suggest that the horror is in any way neutered. While the red meat is used sparingly, the film goes all the way with its story, both in terms of visceral impact and in how it gestures towards larger, ancient terrors. In only their second feature film, Benson and Moorehead have already demonstrated an easy command of the frame. This is horror as slow burn, and not in the Ti West, “Nothing happens for fifty minutes and then some shit goes boo, isn’t that scary?” way. The film throbs with menace, even with the majority taking place in the daylight. Cameras glide through the distance, making characters appear miniscule as they wander empty streets and abandoned rooms. A creeping sensation of rot mounts as the film progresses, with dead and decayed animals interrupting the burgeoning season. While we’re not entirely in Rosemary’s Baby/Don’t Look Now “Everyone is fucked all the time” paranoia territory, there is an unnerving sense of displacement and unease, a sensation paid off with occasional outbursts of horror (which are a really nice blend of CGI and practical FX).
Spring just flat out works, but I didn’t make the jump to flat-out love until a late in the game shift. No spoilers, but suffice to say that Benson and Moorehead zig where decades of monster movies have conditioned us to expect a zag, and the result transforms the film from an engaging curiosity to something deeper, richer, and almost crushingly emotional. The last movement of the film recalls the sort of stories you’d expect to find in one of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman volumes or his Fragile Things collection. The supernatural becomes a conduit by which we engage with the deeper and darker concerns of daily life, unreality through which we may better confront the beautiful and terrible aspects of this, our reality.
Maybe I was just in the right place to be struck so hard by this film, the exact right frame of mind to connect with Evan in his search. I’m not dealing with the death of a parent, thank God, but at 24 I’m starting to feel like my life is stuck in stasis, stuck in a post-college loop that I can’t quite crack. There are days when I wish I could just jump on a plane and start some other man’s life in another country, or get in my car and drive until the wheels come off and see what world I’ve been left at. Ridiculous and selfish, yeah, but there are those days when I want it so bad it’s like an itch doing a tapdance on my spine.
Spring, from the title on down, is about such an awakening. Evan has spent years surrounded by death, and he’s been left with a giant, open heart that needs someone or something to be shared with. He needs to wake up to the possibility of life again, and the moment he finds it, the movie is over. There are those who may be infuriated by where Spring leaves off, but I found myself almost breathless by the final images. Did the movie need the genre element to hit that beat? Enh, maybe not. But by integrating the monster into the drama, it allowed Spring to tap into something immediate, almost primordial, about our species’ desire to connect and love and share.
Spring is a gem, an absolute, across the fucking board homerun. This is the sort of film for which genre aficionados and cineastes alike are always clamoring for. Do yourself and the world a favor and support this movie, either by seeking it out theatrically or scooping it up on VOD, where it is currently available.
Love is a monster, as the tagline warns, and that’s a given. But all the best monsters have souls, and this one’s is a rich and splendid thing.