The debut film of part time actor/writer/director Ryan
Imhoff and co-director/actor Matt Neal, Fresh Hell, is another one of
those post-pandemic webcam horror films about a friendly college theater class
reunion that turns into a nightmare when a deranged stranger inexplicably
infiltrates the chatroom.The difference
here is that right away it leaps head over heels into transgressive shock cinema
ala Megan is Missing only minutes in, giving audiences ample warning to leave
or shut the damn thing off rather than be tricked into sitting through it.
Divided by a three-act structure replete with chapter intertitles
ala Lars Von Trier, the film is largely creepy webcam stuff ala Unfriended or
Host before making an abrupt leap into conventional narrative filmmaking
in the finale.Is it scary?Not really but it’s got plenty of nihilistic “social
commentary” on the present sociopolitical landscape ala Andrew Dominik’s
hamfisted Killing Them Softly with its constant buzzwords and talking
points brought up in conversation or character traits.Oh and there’s a lot of BDSM ‘pup play’ in
this too, including on the poster image, if you’re into that sort of thing. Grace (Lanise Antoine Shelley) starts a Zoom call reuniting several
friends from college theater and it consists of your usual stock trade group of
characters from the right-wing internet personality, the stoner, the woke student
and some kids who had to move back in with their parents after losing their
livelihoods to the pandemic. For awhile
it plays like the beginning of most webcam flicks with everyone talking to each
other, giving the film time to flesh out everyone’s personalities.Then the stranger shows up (played by Imhoff
himself in absurdly over the top form) and after graphically castrating himself
on camera he presents the group’s friend bound up, bloodied and tortured by sadistic
pups.
Over the course of the movie, one by one the stranger and
his pups show up in people’s apartments and webcams, disappearing in and out of
the camera like a supernatural ghost before seeming to murder each character in
their own homes.Grace grows more
concerned people aren’t taking her calls to the police seriously as more people
continue to drop dead, meanwhile her peers seem to think (for the sake of the
movie) that she might simply be crazy due to her own PTSD involving her sister’s
death years prior.All the while as
director Imhoff continues to chew up the scenery, the film shifts gears from a
webcam flick into a standard widescreen thriller, dumping the cinema verite
technique completely in favor of a regular movie.It’s jarring and Imhoff nearly deep sixes the
film in its final scenes all by himself with his Bond villain overacting. Visually this is, for the most part, pixelated and buffering
like a poor internet connection until it turns slick and glossy in the finale
scenes ala 28 Days Later and it’s jump from grimy digital video to
crystal clear 35mm film.The score and
soundtrack by Will Mobley is effective with much of the film’s effectiveness
coming from the creepy internet videos the stranger keeps sending the
group.Let it be said the ensemble cast
is generally good and Imhoff shows a clear command of his actors, if only he
himself had as much self-control.The
visual effects and gore are decent enough with a most grisly introduction to
the stranger that was maybe more than audiences needed to see.
On the one hand Fresh Hell is 75% a halfway decent
webcam thriller that dabbles in some kinks and gross vulgarities with the
remaining 25% devoted to a dreadful mixture of Joker high pitched
laughter and social commentary, replete with many of the news talking points of
the post-pandemic era playing on the soundtrack to ensure audiences ‘get it’. As such, this Horrorhound Best Feature Film
winner will make you a little uncomfortable initially but near the end threatens
to derail whatever points the film was trying to make about society in general
presently. Imhoff’s debut shows promise as
a potentially successful horror filmmaker but for what it’s worth Fresh Hell
wants to be both a scare fest and be ‘about something’ which is where it
loses steam. Those pups were creepy
though.
