Spring

Spring
  

Spring is the latest feature from collaborators Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, both working as directors here. It's about a young man named Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) who takes a sudden trip to Italy to get away from his suddenly deteriorating life. While there Evan begins a passionate, whirlwind romance with a young woman named Louise (Nadia Hilker) who has an ancient, dark secret.

Spring is a movie that has a most unusual mash-up to set up it's story: it's Richard Linklater meets David Cronenberg, Before Sunrise meets The Fly. And it works beautifully. We get plenty of Evan and Louise walking through the streets of Italy getting to know each other and having conversations about their pasts and beliefs. It's a movie that takes it's time, you spend as much time getting to know these characters as they spend getting to know each other. And that's the charm of the film, you LIKE these people and their relationship with each other.

But all is not what it seems. From early on we hear music that warns of something coming, something beneath the surface. A soft and yearning piano plays as a deep swell rises underneath the spaced out and lonely notes taking them over and warning of danger. It's simple and effective music that prepares the viewer for the scattered scenes of Louise fighting back what she really is: a 2,000 year old monster of sorts who takes injections to maintain her human form when she starts to break out into her monster self. The scenes where we see Louise as the monster are well shot and frightening, the camera almost seems dizzy filming her as she moves in frantic stutters and devours animals to satisfy her craving for flesh. All the while Even grows more suspicious that something isn't quite right.

Throughout the movie there are plenty of shots of nature and bugs and insects, lots of worldly sounds and animalistic noises mixed in with the sound of people and human commerce. Much like the relationship between Evan and Louise, there is a joining of human nature and mother nature interspersed throughout the film. It shows these two habitats can live and coexist together in one world. It's a smart and effective nod to the different species in the world and a nice compliment to the two main characters and their story.

Perhaps the most successful outcome of this movie is that it makes you believe in love and therefor you believe in the film itself, you completely buy in and root for it's characters. The biggest contributor to this is the performance of Lou Taylor Pucci. The success of the film rests mainly on his shoulders; if we don't believe in him, we wont believe in the love we see on screen. Pucci nails everything the role demanded, he gives a fully realized and sensitive performance. He's so comfortable as this character, so natural and effortless that I felt the pain and feeling of loss that Evan was experiencing. Pucci is a very promising and talented young actor.

Spring is a beautiful story with horror at it's heart. It asks the question, “how powerful is love?” and runs with the question and the answer. Thanks to the two leads, Lou Taylor Pucci and Nadia Hilker, and a thoughtful script, the film never falls into schmaltzy or overly sappy Nicholas Sparks territory. It plays it straight and thinks through it's story. It's a different kind of love story and a different kind of horror story and it's very well done.