After enjoying Pontypool I thought it was worth checking out another film by the same director, so I picked Hellions which seems like a more stereotypical for it’s sub-genre than Pontypool was it’s sub-genre. Turns out it was anything but stereotypical but did it match the brilliance of Pontypool? click and see what I thought!
Director: Bruce McDonald
Writers: Pascal Trottier, Pascal Trottier
Stars: Chloe Rose, Robert Patrick, Rossif Sutherland
Run time: 80 mins
Trivia – The plot of Hellions is very similar to that of an earlier short story “Buckets” by F. Paul Wilson. In the story, an abortion doctor is visited and tormented by trick-or-treaters who are revealed to be the spirits of fetuses he has aborted throughout his career.
Trivia – The meaning of Hellion is “a rowdy or mischievous person, especially a child”.
The film starts with the main character Dora smoking weed and tonguing her boyfriend, who she makes clear would not be welcomed by her mum. After a routine check up at the doctors Dora finds out she is pregnant and maybe it was just the weed but she has a couple of dodgy hallucinations.
It’s also Halloween and despite being upset that she’s up the duff Dora is persuaded to go to a Halloween party by her mum who is taking her little brother out trick or treating. Dora gets ready dressing as an angel which is less Halloweeny than her everyday clothes.
Nora’s scary Angel costume
She’s soon visited by a very creepy looking child who wants some candy, at first he refuses to leave saying nothing and just standing there. Later on he comes back with two friend also dressed in some seriously creepy costumes (or are they?)
Dora’s boyfriend doesn’t show up on time and isn’t answering his phone this is where things get scary, once his fate is revealed Dora is trapped inside a house and stalked by a whole bunch of weird kids dressed in even weirder Halloween costumes.
She gets joined first by Dr Henry (Rossif Sutherland) who Dora phones when something goes wrong with her pregnancy. Then by local cop Corman (Robert Patrick) it’s him that expands the mythology of the world by telling us this has happened before. With her mum and little brother’s car broken down, we see Dora having to fend for her life from these little weird bastards.
Creepy little bastards!
There’s some good chase scenes and some moments where the kids operated similar to how the Deadites do in Evil Dead, by pretending to be human. This is all done under a blood moon, at least I assume it is as it’s only mentioned once. This leaves the whole survival stuff done with the outside world tinted a kind of purple colour.
The Good
The kids are the best part their costumes which they wear for a reason are great, they look spooky and act even spookier.
Dora played by Chloe Rose is very solid in the lead role and Robert Patrick is always pretty damn solid in these kind of roles.
Robert Patrick is solid as usual!
The Bad
We’re introduced to everyone we’re going to meet in later acts within the first 5 minutes of the film, Robert Patrick’s character’s arrival was far too convenient. Maybe that’s just me being fussy!
Serious pacing issues, Pontypool’s (you can read my review of Pontypool by clicking here!) build up and pacing was what made it so damn good. However the director is unable to match that with this film, there’s quite a few patches where the film is pretty boring. I enjoyed the build up to the actual house invasion but once there it started to go down hill.
More creepy little bastards hanging around in the purple/pink tinted night time scenes
The ending was predictable, it’s here where people try to make unpredictable twists and cool endings, usually these fall into two categories for me. They’re either perfectly executed and enjoyable or predictable and ultimately pointless.
This film failed to live up to my expectations, it was a great premise but it wasn’t quite pulled off well enough. Pacing issues and some dodgy scenes lead me to rate this a lot lower than Pontypool, I certainly won’t be watching this one again any time soon and by that I mean ever. Let me know what you thought of this film in the comments section!
Overall Rating
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