Some Kind of Hate concerns troubled teen Lincoln (Spencer Breslin), who comes from a rough home and kicks off the movie by sticking a fork in the face of a school bully. He is sent to a school in the middle of the desert that specializes in dealing with problem teenagers. The school espouses all manner of new age philosophy, but Lincoln quickly finds that his experience there won't be radically different from regular school. He is once again the target of a bully, and out of frustration, he inadvertently unleashes a vengeful spirit that seeks to harm everyone around him.
Teenage angst forms the foundation of this horror movie. The most daring thing that the film does is craft a protagonist that gives voice to thoughts that people have come to fear in the age of school shootings. The young man at the center of this film is tormented to the degree that he starts thinking about doing harm to others, about doing the kind of horrible things that occasionally make the news. It then personifies that horrific thinking through its supernatural threat, a vengeful ghost whose method of hurting others is tied to her penchant for self-harm.
It's not a bad idea, and it produces a couple of really visceral images. But the movie doesn't work hard enough to turn these ideas into compelling cinema. It takes a little too long to get going, the threat coming pretty late to the game. The buildup to its arrival involves repetitive sequences that have Lincoln either courting romance with one of his classmates, or suffering the wrath of his new bullies. Though the film spends a lot of time on these young people, they never feel like full characters, their motivations feeling pretty vague right up to the very end.
And this school doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So much of this story is built on the school somehow flying under the radar, in spite of the alarmingly constant rate at which its students perish. The film hardly devotes any time to the effects that these deaths have on these characters. Even if the outside world doesn't notice, the people in the school, both students and teachers, should certainly be much more worried about what's going on. But they hardly ever address the elephant in the room.
The film's violence is appropriately shocking at points. The way the threat kills people is kind of inventive, and there are a couple of sequences that might turn the stomach. The film falters in the resolution, but there is merit to the way it commits to its particular brand of horror. The acting is a mixed bag at best. Lead actor Spencer Breslin is appropriately broody, though he doesn't really look like the kind of guy that would get bullied. His co-stars are saddled with characters that don't really have a lot of depth. They are basically just there to be fed to the threat.
Some Kind of Hate has a few memorable gory images, but not much else. There is a glimmer of something really sophisticated in here, a willingness to explore a kind of darkness that is rarely seen in cinemas. There are plenty of stories of bullied kids, but not many that go into the kind of horrific thinking that this kind of torment may bring. But it feels like the film doesn't really put in the required work to make its threat anything more than just another slasher. In the end, the film revels in the violence that it ostensibly condemns, losing its thematic weight along the way.
My Rating:
