‘Spontaneous’ a bloody good horror/comedy
It’s just a typical senior year at small-town Covington High School for Mara Carlyle — thinking of boys, posting on social media, trying to be the snarkiest in your group of snarky friends.
Then, sitting in class, the girl in front of Mara spontaneously combusts. Blood and innards everywhere. Ewww!
It’s not a one off. Pretty soon, there’s an epidemic of students spontaneously combusting — Covington’s senior class is suddenly losing more members than Spinal Tap lost drummers. What in the name of “Scanners” is happening?
Brian Duffield’s “Spontaneous,” based on Aaron Starmer’s best-selling YA novel, doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s at times a horror film, at times a teenage romance, sometimes a comedy, other times an allegory of teenage angst — and that’s what makes it strangely wonderful and fresh.
Mara (Katherine Langford, “Knives Out,” “13 Reason Why”) narrates her own story of one wild ride of a senior year. In the days after the initial combustion, Mara and best friend Tess (Hayley Law) talk about anything but the most horrifying thing they’ve ever witnessed. Perhaps as a diversion, Mara decides to date the handsome — in a skateboarder sort of way — and witty Dylan (Charlie Plummer), and what do you know, she falls in love.
Just when you think “Spontaneous” will turn into a teen romance, another senior spontaneously combusts. And then another. Soon, surviving blood-spattered members of the class are quarantined in a makeshift government lab as scientists try and figure out what is happening, and if it is contagious or coincidence.
When Mara and Dylan are in adjoining hospital beds, they reach out for each other and re-enact a scene from “E.T.” It’s funny, but more than that it’s refreshing to see high school students who have experienced an movie older than themselves, a dwindling breed indeed.
The final third of the movie deepened my admiration for it. No spoilers, but the film reveals itself to be about Mara’s growing humanity, from vacuous, privileged teen to a thinking, growing, caring person.
So maybe “Spontaneous” does know what it wants to be: everything at once. Bloody good.