Hurt, the new film by Sonny Mallhi (Anguish, Family Blood), begins almost like a horror version of Slacker as the narrative is bounced from protagonist to protagonist, eventually settling on Tommy (Andrew Creer) and Rose (Emily van Raay). The troubled young couple are celebrating their first Halloween together after Tommy recently returned from his first tour of duty, a much different man than the one who left. The film is very quick to establish that Tommy appears to be suffering from some severe form of PTSD as the couple readies to go to a haunted hayride together. After witnessing his wife’s appalling reaction to the fictitious death around them, Tommy becomes distraught and wanders off into the woods. Rose then spends the rest of the night trying to find her husband as someone is picking off those close to her. This resolves itself in a halfhearted twist ending that fell flat as the logic behind it.
Hurt is an artier take on the Blumhouse high concept, high body count model than they are more traditionally known for. While I applaud this approach, I still found the film very problematic to say the least. My biggest issue with Hurt and its clever final revelation is that it doesn’t feel quite earned by the story. When the killer is finally revealed it feels more like a result of post-production problem solving to salvage a more predictable story. I say this because the bookends at the start and end of the film lack almost any connection to the narrative threads and themes at the core of the story of the couple. The only that context that connects them is added after or before the fact. While both Andrew and Emily put forth a valiant effort on screen, the script here feels disjointed, not giving them much to do that doesn’t feel forced or cliché.
Watching Hurt I was honestly left with more questions about the production and how this film came to be rather than anything involving the story. It seemed like it originally was a much different film than what ended up on screen. The film’s setup with the couple feels like it could have been a more intimate story of one man struggling with his demons and his own sanity on Halloween night. This could have lent itself to a much darker and more personal story, but the film loses sight of Tommy halfway through the film as we spend the bulk of the runtime watching Rose attempt to get home from the hayride and look for her missing husband rather than getting into the reason Tommy cracked in the first place. Because of that, the film currently screening at Fantasia is a bit of a chore at times to sit through as you watch Rose leave message after message on her phone for her sister and her husband, shouldering the brunt of trying to salvage this fractured narrative.