Featured Image Courtesy of Giant Pictures
Art of a Hit, a new indie horror flick that follows a washed-up 90s rock band’s endeavor to make a comeback album in a centuries-old castle in the French countryside, lured me in with its enticing concept, but I worried it would be nothing more than a by-the-book, low-budget horror movie. Thankfully, while the film has its corny moments, it’s far more imaginative, interesting, and engaging than I first anticipated.
The protagonist of the film, Ryan, played by Ryan Donowho, has gotten his band back together to try to record a comeback album with the notable loss of their frontman, Miles, played by Rob Raco, who has made it big as a solo act.
Admittedly, the film starts off in a pretty trite fashion. The band is playing at an awards show at peak popularity, before the scene devolves into a nightmare sequence capping off with an incredibly cheap looking jumpscare of a static, gory figure swinging at the screen like a dummy attached to a rope. At this extremely early point in the film, I thought I was in for a supremely cheesy, low-budget horror film. Luckily, I would turn out to be incorrect as the film would soon develop into something more complex and compelling than I had initially envisioned.
The film cuts to the present day where Ryan is on the road with bandmates Timmy (Tim Jo), Mat (James Earl), and Cristen (Allie McDonald) who were all part of the original lineup of their band, Excelsis. Accompanying them is David (David Valdes), a newcomer to the band with bright ideas, but without the years of chemistry and experience the others have working together. The motley crew is in France en route to a castle where they’re meeting the eccentric mega producer Charlie (Charlie Saxton).
The introductory portions of this film are disappointingly basic, bland, and often cringeworthy with millennial sarcasm oozing throughout the script. At one point, Tim Jo’s character actually says the line “Goddamn this place is creepy as fuck, especially at night,” without a hint of irony. That line in particular was so on the nose I had to whip out my phone to write it down almost in disbelief. It’s this kind of dialogue that defines the first act of the film, making it a bit of a slog to get through.
Luckily, things ramp up quite a bit when the film starts to play with reality. I found it interesting how the film would go through dream sequences without making it immediately clear and then snap back to the real world. These dream sequences focus on lead singer and acoustic guitar player, Ryan, as he grapples with a seemingly imagined or perhaps supernatural version of his ex-bandmate, Miles. To me, these scenes seemed to serve to emphasize Ryan’s own delusions regarding past successes and current vendettas, adding a tangibly terrifying effect to these internal emotions.
The movie is far from perfect, but by the third act I was in for the ride. I appreciated that the film fully leaned into the surreal stylings introduced earlier in the film. Art of a Hit also does a great job at showing us an unreliable narrator and often hateable main character in Ryan, making his motivations clear and understandable, but not at all glossing over the negative aspects of his personality.
The themes of artistic legacy, success, failure, inspiration, found family, and betrayal come together in an earnest way with some decent performances, especially from Charlie Saxton and James Earl. While the clichéd dialogue and slow pace of the first act drew me in with skepticism, Art of a Hit took just enough bold swings to shine as a project that feels genuine and thoughtful despite its imperfections. Ryan suffers from his decisions and ultimately comes away from the whole experience of ambitiously chasing success downtrodden and defeated. His decisions burn his friends, driving them away, he doesn’t live up to his aspirations, and the film gracefully offers those heavy feelings to its audience.
