The Hive came to Fantastic Fest with a lot of promise. Of course, every film that premieres at a film festival could be the next great discovery, and any first time filmmaker might be the next visionary. It’s kind of hard to get into a film festival, so that’s something. But The Hive also had James Gunn as a special guest to moderate the Q&A with filmmaker David Yarovesky, so that’s a pretty big endorsement. Gunn actually watched it for the first time with us but he said he liked it and seemed sincere. He knew Yarovesky personally. The film still has to stand on its own merits, but like most “Stephen King Presents” or “Wes Craven Presents” or “Quentin Tarantino Presents” or “Kevin Smith Presents,” it did not live up to the endorsement.
The Hive has big ideas but rather small thinking. It combines a lot of ideas from the likes of Memento and Robert Heinlein (Body Snatchers, or if you really know your Heinlein, The Puppet Masters), with only one new MacGuffin tying it all together. Much of the explanation involves a character speaking out loud to no one but really to the audience. The aggressive filmmaking style is even more obnoxious and off-putting.
Adam (Gabriel Basso) wakes up in a room with amnesia and a woman’s body and starts piecing together memories of what happened. It begins with his time as a camp counselor. He’s a bit of a womanizer, but far more likable than his friend Clark (Jacob Zachar), who likes to treat the kids like terrorist stereotypes. After he carelessly bumps into counselor Katie (Kathryn Prescott), Adam actually falls for her.
I’ll say something positive: the cast achieves a few moments of genuine honesty in the emerging relationship between Adam and Katie. Adam may be immature but he’s not trying to be a bad person. Katie lays out the realities of young relationships in that girls mature faster than guys, but it’s poignant. It’s also admirable that the film develops all of this before it gets into the horror.
Adam’s random memories also reveal a plane crash. Out of the wreckage emerges sick pilots and passengers spewing black goo. Memories also reveal a scientist exploring the connection all minds share, The Kayla Effect, named after a patient. The Kayla Effect is the MacGuffin that connects a hive mind story to an amnesia story. The theory is we can access memories to which we have no connection, if only scientists can unlock it. That’s a profound concept, but if that means that Adam has to stand around explaining all the random memories he’s accessing to us, then you haven’t quite cracked that story.
In the second act when things are at their most mysterious, The Hive presents a strobing effect combined with tilted angles and handheld camera to boot. So, jittering tilted flickering footage. Come on, who would ever want to look at that? Whatever artistic effect you are aiming to create, you have to consider the total aesthetic impact. Besides, using tilting and shaking and strobing to indicate confusion is an uninspired technique.
So if The Hive does get buzz this week at Fantastic Fest, I have gone on record with my warning. If it doesn’t, then maybe I just picked on a movie you’ll never hear of again, but that’s good for context. We champion so many unknown festival favorites, every once in a while we have to demonstrate why they’re not all treasures.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
