Teenage romcom blows up genres
It’s just a typical senior year at smalltown 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!
And it’s not a oneoff. 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 bestselling young adult novel and available to stream now, 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. But that’s what makes it strangely wonderful and fresh.
Mara ( Katherine Langford of “Knives Out,” “13 Reasons 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 skaterboy 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 bloodspattered members of the class are quarantined in a makeshift government lab as scientists try to figure out what is happening, and whether it is contagious or coincidence.
When Mara and Dylan are in adjoining hospital beds, they reach out for each other and reenact a scene from “E. T.” It’s funny, but more than that it’s refreshing to see high school students who have experienced a 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.