THE HATRED ** USA 2018 Dir: John Law 60 mins
In the 1860’s during the American Civil War some rogue soldiers argue about raiding a home for supplies, those soldiers opposed to slaughtering an innocent family are killed by those that are happy to do so and the deed is done. One young girl is the sole survivor of the raid who then goes on a revenge attack of her own. She resurrects one of the fallen soldiers that had been killed and goes on the hunt to track down her families killers. The tale is told by means of a narrative confession after the young girl herself is caught but do the soldiers believe her story?
I would love to say that I enjoyed this movie but there was a fair bit that let it down. The main thing being that even for a mere hour long movie you will find yourself clock watching 30 minutes in as it was tedious, slow and overly wordy. This is a shame though as I thought the camerawork, effects and location were really superb but were not enough to lift this movie past the 2 star mark. The acting was particularly poor from the majority of the adult cast but Zelda Adams as the young girl was pretty good and seemed to control the majority of the script. As always seems to be the way with child actors she does seem to suffer with the usual “face like a slapped arse” syndrome but I have seen worse. The dialogue was a mixture of whispery poetic narration and some incredibly weak lines. For example: early on when a soldier is slain, just before he expires he weakly proclaims “I am killed” just in case we didn’t know what was happening……er, thanks for that! I didn’t realise at the time but the characters don’t have names, instead some are named after the 7 sins with Zelda Adams and her soldier partner simply known as Hatred and Vengeance which I thought was a great idea but it wasn’t really utilized in the movie. The soundtrack was very different to what I had expected it to be. I thought it was a bit misplaced. Considering it is set in the 1860’s it seemed odd to pair the title war scene with a kind of Metal track and then throughout the rest of the movie it changed into a very brash electronic beepy ensemble that was really weird but on the plus side did make it a little more interesting. Director John Law (who also plays Vengeance) certainly tried hard when filming this. If IMDb trivia is anything to go by it would seem he was nearly asphyxiated during one scene, then nearly died of exposure during another and was also questioned by the fire department when one of his props was mistaken for a real dead body. Sounds like he put his life on the line for this effort so I do feel a bit bad for not being more enthusiastic about it but its just too slow and whispery to hold your attention for long, so sorry Mr. Law there are some great shots, lighting and detail in there but the rest just didn’t do it for me.
Review by Sarah Budd