Some Kind of Hate (2015)
Directed by: Adam Egypt Mortimer
Written by: Adam Egypt Mortimer, Brian DeLeeuw
Starring: Grace Phipps, Ronen Rubinstein, Sierra McCormick, Spencer Breslin
Troubled teen Lincoln (Ronen Rubinstein) is pushed too far by high school bullies and lashes out, stabbing one in the cheek with a fork. He is sent to a camp in the countryside for troubled youths to learn to change their ways. Camp councillors and occupants suddenly start dying as a vengeful ghost comes back to teach them all a lesson.
Clichés abound as Some Kind of Hate attempts to take on bullying and self-harm in a tale of ghostly revenge. Opening with an intriguing and slightly disturbing shot, the film quickly falls flat into a filthy pool of uninteresting characters, an annoying soundtrack, female characters who are barely allowed to register over being sex objects, overuse of pointless lens flare, an ineffective and muddled setting creating and a complete lack of scares or tension. At best it’s boring, at worst it’s laughable; try not to smirk as Lincoln bonds with Kaitlin (Grace Phepps) by making her a playlist and expounding on how heavy metal changes his life.
The main problem with the film, sat pride of place amongst its myriad others, is with Lincoln. Lincoln is the stereotypical emo/goth teen who is relentlessly bullied at home and at school, who listens to heavy metal, wears black clothes and is really good at drawing, who is pushed too far into violence but is really good underneath. Played by Ronen Rubinstein who never looks comfortable in the role, perhaps because he knows he’s only playing a walking bag of cliché, he spends most of the time with hunched shoulders, looking up from under his floppy black fringe and is never interesting or remotely convincing the whole way through the film. This is also not helped by the fact that the film tries to convince us that Lincoln is 15/16 years old when he looks about 32.
The only really interesting and original part of Some Kind Of Hate is the vengeful ghost Moira (Sierra McCormick). Despite the limp name for a murderous ghost, she is an interesting creation. She attacks people by self-harming, the wounds then appearing on the person she is attacking. This gives self-harming a literal physical embodiment on her enemies showing the damage that their bullying caused her and it is interesting, if a little flippant, that the film is tackling the issue of bullying and revenge in such a way. Unfortunately, as the film progresses Moira becomes more shrill and irritating and as she starts attacking innocent people, the reason for her killing and purpose becomes blurred into just being a ghostly bad guy that needs stopping.
Some Kind Of Hate is definitely some kind of something. That something is definitely not anything good.
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