#HORROR (2015) (Blu-ray Review)

#HORROR (2015)

Label: Scream Factory I IFC Midnight

Release Date: April 5th 2016

Region Code: A

Duration: 98 Minutes

Rating: Unrated

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1)

Director:Tara Subkoff

Cast: Chloë Sevigny, Emma Adler, Haley Murphy, Lydia Hearst, Annabelle Dexter-Jones,Balthazar Getty, Blue Lindeberg, Bridget McGarry, Mina Sundwall, Natasha Lyonne, Sadie Seelert, Stella Schnabel, Taryn Manning, Timothy Hutton

Synopsis: You've got followers… cyberbullying goes offline. #Horror follows a group of pre-teen girls living in a suburban world of money and privilege. But when their obsession with a disturbing online game goes too far, virtual terror becomes all too real. Chloë Sevigny (American Horror Story, American Psycho) leads an ensemble cast that includes Timothy Hutton (American Crime, The Dark Half) and Orange Is The New Black's Natasha Lyonne and Taryn Manning. This chiller, inspired by a shocking true story, is written and directed by actress/designer Tara Subkoff (The Cell, The Last Days Of Disco).

#Horror seems to be trying to tackle the very real issue of cyber bullying among the pre-teen crowd through the use of social media framed within the context of a slasher movie. We have a group of six awful adolescent girls who gather inside the pimped out glass mansion home of one of their own, they play dress-up, adorn themselves with costume jewelry, drink straight Vodka and hurl insults at one another from start to finish. All the while they snap pics on their iPhones of each other and post them on some strange mean-spirited social media site, tagging the images with hurtful things like #fatuglybitches. At first these are played off as innocuous cattiness among friends, but before long the insults begin to cut deep and young girls start crying and then dying, each of the bland murders are posted and live streamed to the same social media site garnering the much coveted likes and shares. 

I found the whole thing a bit ugly and confusing mess of a movie, the screen is lit up with annoying emoji and #tags, and the young girls are the worst sort of over privileged snots you can imagine, and hope your kids never turn into to. About the only character building is when the girls share parenting and period horror stories with each other for about a minute, and when they start dying you cannot help but sort of cheer the unidentified killer on, the world is a truly better place without them. 

And what of these young girls parents, what is their role in all this, you may be wondering. We have Chloe Sevigny and Timothy Hutton slumming it as parents of separate children, but with some sexual link between the two, and both are as annoying as their offspring. They play it over-the-top, chewing up the scenery in a fun sort of way, which I must admit I did not loathe. 

The actresses do maybe a bit too good of a job portraying bitchy pre-teen, they're full of sarcasm and hurtful insults for each other, though I cannot fault their performances, just the dire script and narrative stricture of the movie which is a hot seizure inducing mess of poor editing. Along the way we are fed details about the former owner of the glass mansion, a nutty artisan who murdered a house full of party guests back in the '60s, but whom has since disappeared, which would seem to inform the slasher element of the movie, but don't get your hopes up, by the time you figure out what the heck is happening and who the killer is you will have long since stopped carrying. On the other hand my fifteen year old daughter who enjoys horror told me it was meant for teens, not old guys, haha. 2/5