My film watch on 14 July 2024 was a quite extraordinary movie from 10 years ago entitled Spring, and best described as a body horror/modern romance.
It was directed by Jstin Benson and Aaron Moorhead who doubled-up in various other roles too (they co-produced it, with Benson co-editing it, as well as writing its screenplay, plus Moorhead serving as its cinematographer), and released in 2014 by Drafthouse Films and FilmBuff.
Spring centres upon young American Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) who flies on a whim from the States to Italy in order to escape his grief after his mother succumbs to cancer. While staying in a small village near Naples, he meets a mysterious young woman named Louise (Nadia Hilker) who is very adept at evading questions but is also very keen to have unprotected sex with him, so they do.
The movie's viewers, but not Evan, are then privy to some grotesque scenes in which Louise shape-shifts into bizarre, monstrous entities, during which phases she kills and devours various animals and also murders a young man who approaches her in a dark alley one evening, mistaking her for a prostitute.
After Louise abruptly breaks up with Evan, however, he unexpectedly turns up at her home to try to resolve matters, but is terrified to find her writhing on the floor in the form of a hideous multi-tentacled monster that reminded me of Greek mythology's Scylla. However, he succeeds in injecting her with a hypodermic syringe that she always keeps close by for a medical condition that she has never elaborated upon to Evan, and he watches as she gradually transforms back into human form.
During the lengthy explanation that follows, Louise informs Evan that she is a 2,000-year-old immortal entity who renews herself every 20 years, on the spring equinox of that year, by becoming pregnant and then absorbing the resulting embryo's stem cells. Just prior to each regeneration, however, her body becomes wildly unstable, causing her to metamorphose erratically into previous monstrous incarnations, as has been happening now, and is the reason why she broke up with Evan, to keep him safe from her dangerous ravages.
Evan pleads with Louise to give up her immortality and become mortal so that they can be together as a normal mortal couple – but even though she does love Evan, is her immortality too powerful a gift, or curse, for Louise to be willing or even able to sacrifice?
The special effects are brief but effective, especially the climactic tentacled monster reveal scene, which is positively Lovecraftian and quite horrific. On the downside, there is far too much wholly gratuitous bad language, which becomes ever more grating as the film progresses. Otherwise, however, Spring is a thoroughly offbeat but engrossing romantic fantasy, quite unlike anything that I've seen before.
If you'd like to watch an official trailer for this movie, please click here to view one on YouTube.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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