Justin Benson
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Filmography
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An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Directed by John Landis
influenced Spring (2014)
Visuals Plot Themes
It’s the most regal of Shakespearean epics meets the most sinister Joe Dante feverdream, striking a wealth of emotional riches while also utilizing beastly effects reminiscent of Landis’ An American Werewolf In London and many other skin-tearing affairs.
A mutant hybrid between Before Sunrise and An American Werewolf in London, Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s Spring is a clever and severely romantic creature feature that, not unlike its dim-witted bro hero, is in desperate need of a woman’s touch.
A bit like a cross between Before Sunrise and An American Werewolf in London but nowhere near as good as either.
Tone is everything in "Spring," a " Before Sunset "-esque drama whose amiably rambling plot mimics its love-lorn protagonist's journey.
The best way I can describe Spring is by calling it a monster-movie version of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise.
Ostensibly, the film starts out somewhat like Before Sunrise, if that Richard Linklater film took place entirely in the headspace of the Ethan Hawke character while he traveled Europe by train.
Since festival audiences have already exhausted the “Spring is like…” comments over every form of social media (Spring is like Before Sunrise meets H.P. Lovecraft, for example), I’ll just plainly say that Spring is romantically horrific bliss, achieving perfection through tragedy and soul.
Put another way, the new indie film Spring feels a little like Before Sunrise, as imagined by a pair of filmmakers who love David Cronenberg, but are clearly more interested in the emotional side of humanity, and not necessarily the visceral side of the story.
Some have already compared the romantic elements in “Spring” to Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise,” a fair comparison but also a bit misleading, as the writing here is a little spotty at times and the romance a bit rushed even if the gorgeous leads, Lou Taylor Pucci (from the recent “Evil Dead” remake and “Thumbsucker”) and Nadia Hilker, have solid chemistry together and give good performances.
On the other hand, it’s not difficult at that point to imagine him following up with Robert Mitchum’s immortal line from “Out of the Past”: “Baby, I don’t care.”
With hints of screwball comedy and stunning aerial camera-drone shots that would make even a blockbuster-budget movie proud, "Spring" is entirely successful in its mission, and an interesting successor to such can-this-relationship-be-saved predecessors as "Cat People" (1942), "Possession (1981) and "Let the Right One In" (2008); yet for this genre fan, it's final-act emphasis on romance over horror is a disappointment.
Stanley is by no means the first filmmaker to tackle a short story by the notoriously difficult-to-adapt Lovecraft; indeed, the more successful Lovecraft adaptations are less direct book-to-screen translations than they are much more loosely inspired by the broader sensibility of his Cthulhu Mythos, such as films like Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 Isabelle Adjani-fronted Possession (the only film to win a major award at Cannes and be listed as a Video Nasty), Federico Greco’s 2005 found-footage horror film Il mistero di Lovecraft – Road to L. , and Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s exquisite 2014 horror-romance Spring .
Benson and Moorhead moved away from the world of Resolution with their second film together, Spring , about a young man who unwittingly gets sexually and emotionally involved with a monster.
Just as Benson and Moorhead played with convention in 2014’s excellent Spring, which is like a Lovecraftian version of Before Sunrise, they usurp narrative standards in The Endless, using broad strokes as table setting to paint way outside the lines.
Enter Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, the duo who brought us 2012’s Resolution and 2014’s Spring , both fantastic independent features that knew exactly how to take a “less is more” approach that still satisfied viewers.
Three years after their much-lauded but underwhelming sophomore feature Spring , indie directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead continue in the same Lovecraftian vein for their far more nuanced follow-up.
Benson (writer, co-director, co-star, co-producer, co-editor) and Moorhead (cinematographer, co-director, co-star, co-producer) have shown their knack for this sort of bargain-priced material before, although this is a bigger and more ambitious effort than their previous picture Spring.
Spring attempts to bring together two genres that ordinarily wouldn’t be seen on either side of the street together — horror and romance — but it turns out, under Benson and Moorhead, together they can make something beautiful and scary.
Having amassed a significant following after their critically acclaimed indie efforts, including 2014 breakout Spring and 2017’s The Endless (read review), there’s certainly enough offbeat incorporation of stimulating suggestions to evoke conversation in their latest venture.
Maria Lattila: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead first burst into the consciousness of genre film fans with their 2014 feature Spring which was described as Before Sunrise for horror fans.
In between, they melded cosmic horror with vacation romance in Spring, yet throughout there has been an underlying strand of lightness, of optimism (sometimes misplaced) about the human condition.
The minds behind The Endless , Spring and Resolution once again challenge their audience while pulling out all the stops in their pursuit to entertain, doing so with jubilantly spectacular aplomb.
Blending science fiction, crime drama and psychedelia, Synchronic is the wildly eccentric fourth film by American filmmaking duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (The Endless , Spring ).
These guys have cultivated a small but loyal following on the backs of some go-for-broke indies that texture familiar human terrors with creative horror tropes (“Spring” might reductively be described as “Before Sunrise” with monsters, and “The Endless” as NXIVM in actual purgatory instead of just Albany), and even their less successful meditations on lost time offer compelling evidence that a decent budget is no match for a boundless imagination.
The movie has been co-produced by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, whose own films — “Resolution” (2012), “Spring” (2014), “ The Endless ” (2018) — similarly blur the line between horror and the queasily ordinary.
His work is known for its use of electronics, synthesizer and Rhodes piano, all of which is on display in the score for “Spring,” often reminiscent of Michael Andrews’ work on “Donnie Darko.”
Spring has about it an air of Near Dark.
Benson and Moorhead made a splash with their twisty meta-flick Resolution, that one another observantly-written character/relationship drama that takes on genre implications somewhere along the line.
Co-directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (“Resolution,” “V/H/S: Viral”), working from a script credited to Benson, do a clever job of entwining elements of budding romance, mounting dread and indolent vacation in their leisurely paced, handsomely produced indie feature.
Just as Benson and Moorhead accomplished in Resolution, Spring breezes through scenes in the most effortless of manners.
Screenwriter Justin Benson, who co-directs with Aaron Moorhead (they previously teamed on Resolution), puts an interesting spin on myths, magic and monsters, enfolding them in a dream-like relationship drama that makes space for brief touches of humour.
Directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, the latter of whom also wrote the screenplay, previously collaborated on Resolution , a crazy quilt of horror-movie clichés.
Trust, though, that much as their overlooked directorial debut, Resolution, steeped itself in compelling character development before slyly incorporating longstanding horror lore, Benson and Moorhead remain eager to keep an audience on its collective toes.
Their Lovecraftian exploration of love and fate, Spring, delivered a beautiful story of two people willing to risk it all in order to be together.
Written and directed by the very clever guys who made Resolution (2012), Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson’s Spring is only tangentially a “horror” film, but don’t let that turn you off; there are hundreds of gory flicks about a guy who falls in love with a female “monster” – check out Vincenzo Natali’s colorfully insane Splice – but Spring is more interested in the mental and emotional impact of not only discovering a supernatural being, but also in falling in love with her.
They, too, began with a small-scale winner (2012’s “Resolution”) before moving onto more ambitious fare (2014’s “Spring” and last year’s “The Endless”).
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Directed by Michel Gondry
influenced Spring (2014)
Themes
Spring is also about Louise's choices in this life: whether, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-like, she should fall in love in a mortal world--if she should give up eternity for the chance to play at eternity in just a few moments.
It's a horror film insomuch as Let the Right One In was a horror film.