Warning: lots of spoilers!!
Spring
After travelling with some British tourists he met in a hostel, Evan encounters Louise when she propositions him for sex. He rebuffs her offer of a one night stand only to spend the rest of the film wooing her. Louise claims to be a student of genetics but it may be better to say that she's studying herself. Each night she begins to transform into a different monstrous creature mutating into things that resemble werewolves, vampires, and worse. She tries to drive Evan away but he finds himself more and more in love with her.
Ultimately Evan discovers Louise's secret. She tells him that she's an immortal creature with a rapidly mutating biology. Despite the supernatural tinge to her transformation, she claims to be just the result on as yet unknown science. She feeds on animals to replenish the stem cells that keep her stable and human. To fully stabilize, she must mate and use the cells of her fetus to give birth to a new version of herself. She'll be a new person, in a way Evan's daughter.
But Evan persists and learns there is another way for her to stay human. If she really falls in love with him then her body can use her adult cells to stabilize instead of her fetus's. She'll remain her current self and become mortal. But she's never had that happen, even over 2000 years of existence.
Evan accepts her for her monstrosity and spends the final day before her transformation with her. She warns him that before her rebirth, she will become a ravening beast. She tells him to run. They visit her home town where her parents died when Vesuvius blew. Her condition allowed her to survive but her mother who had found mortality did not. They wait for the coming dawn as he holds her.
There is some real tension in that last sunrise. Will she transform and kill him or does love win out? Meanwhile in the background the volcano smokes.
The special effects are good and the cinematography is excellent. The film frames most of the scenes with a wide shot of this beautiful seaside town, adding just a hint of the menace to come. In some cases it is just a spider catching a fly while other later scenes show the bloody marks of her carnage.
The rest of the cast manages to feel real in way that characters in many other films don't from Evan's dying mother who goes out after telling a dumb joke to the drunken Brits crudely sharing their feelings to Evan's idiotic friend talking about the fish smell that clings to him.
The weakest part of the narrative is perhaps the beginning. Given that Evan has lost his job (a subject that concerns him), where does he find the cash to go to Italy? Trans-Atlantic travel is not cheap and he needs a ticket (and thus cash) to get home.
But otherwise the film is excellent, short on scares but high on creepy imagery and dramatic tension. The main characters are quite engaging. Lou Pucci portrays Evan as earnest and sweet without any of the naiveté or simpleness that would otherwise doom such a character while Nadia Hilker's witty dialog as Louise makes you love her.
Gaming Ideas
My first thought in adapting this to a game would be Beast: the Primordial, even though that game line doesn't actually have obvious monstrosity in it. I just think Louise as a Beast just looking for love and trying control her hungers would make for a good concept.My second thought is to create a science fiction version of all those urban fantasy horror settings. So much like Underworld, all the monsters have a scientific explanation. I've had ideas recently for a while of a world of genetic abnormalities hiding in the world, mutants manipulating humanity and/or struggling to blend in. It strikes me that Spring might be set in such a world, where monsters are rare, appearing when only the right set of genes are expressed.
Monster Squad
The premise is that a hundred years ago, Van Helsing tried to banish evil from the world using a magic amulet (a plan that involved an incantation done by a virgin). The plan fails and now Dracula seeks to destroy the amulet to alter the balance between good and evil. He calls to him various monsters to help his search: a werewolf, a mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Frankenstein's monster.
Meanwhile our heroes, led by 12-year-old Sean, uncover the plot via Van Helsing's diary, which Sean's mother picked up at a yard sale. Sean also learns about the involvement of Dracula (who calls around for the diary as Alucard), the mummy (whose disappearance from the museum he hears about though his father, a police detective), and the werewolf (who gets shot by the cops but reanimates).
The rest of the "Monster Squad" includes Sean's best friend Patrick, "fat kid" Horace, the much younger Eugene, and Rudy, the new recruit and junior high student. Later they add Phoebe, Sean's little sister, Patrick's older sister and "Scary German guy", a holocaust survivor who helps translate the diary. Phoebe gets to officially join the club because she brings Frankenstein's monster who she's befriended. The monster however warns that Dracula sent him to kill them.
So with the plot spelled out, they have to steal the amulet before nightfall and before Dracula can destroy it. Cue 80s action montage! The team grabs a bow, makes stakes, a silver bullet and writes the army for help as they prepare for the night's action.
While half the team head for the creepy house where the amulet is hidden, Patrick and Rudy suss out if Patrick's sister is a virgin. With some blackmail (in the form of an exposing photo accidentally taken by the monster while at the squad's clubhouse), she agrees to help.
The rest of the team manages to escape the house with the amulet, though Frankenstein's monster is crushed by some falling debris and possibly killed. Their German friend gives them a ride to town square to do the ritual, despite some mummy trouble along the way. Unfortunately the ritual fails because Patrick's sister is not in fact a virgin.
Eventually Sean's dad, Del, sorts out there is trouble brewing though he's too late to help the kids before the final showdown.
The movie possesses an interesting mix of humor and seriousness. On one hand the monsters are scary and the effects are done well. On the other hand the dialog is full of jokes, including how ludicrous this all is. My favorite line has to be when they pose Rudy the question of the second way to kill a werewolf. Turns out none of them have an idea, though the option of "falling out a window, onto a bomb" comes up and is later tried (it doesn't work).
In the final showdown, Scary German guy leads Phoebe through the ritual instead while the others try to hold off and many cases eliminate the monsters.
Only Dracula remains in the end and I have to say his final entrance is awesome. He simply moves forward, killing and incapacitating police officers as they rush forward to stop him, never breaking stride. Overall this film's Count scores highly. He transforms credibly into a bat, possesses a ghostly car, can summon lightning, shoot beams of magical energy, and appears somewhat super strong. Garlic burns him but at least in bat form, daylight doesn't hurt him.
Of course his match comes when Frankenstein's monster returns, saving Pheobe and hurling Dracula on a wrought iron fence. That buys enough time to complete the ritual. A vortex then sucks up the forces of evil including Frankenstein's monster (in a tearful goodbye).
Gaming Ideas
Part of me wonders what comes after this movie. The major monsters have been defeated but surely evil exists elsewhere. While many of the kids might not become professional monster hunters, Rudy essentially already is, having slain 3 vampires, a mummy and a werewolf. Perhaps the military forces that arrive at the end are really a branch of Task Force: Valkyrie?In any case this scenario suggests a couple mashup games: World of Darkness: Innocents and Hunter: the Vigil (with "Kick Him in the Nards" as a Tactic!) or Bubblegumshoe meets the Dracula Dossier (combination I'm tempted to run with now).
No comments:
Post a Comment