by Jason Suzuki
Unlike Unfriended which examined how a new age of bullying, where anonymity is key, makes everyone including the final girl a heartless prick, the bullying in Some Kind of Hate is very physical and comes off as tired until you see where the movie takes its focus on bullying and the inner explosions it inspires within the bullied. The film follows Lincoln (Ronen Rubinstein), a bullied teenager who gets unfairly sent to a reform school when he decides to fight back. While at the reform school, run by a man who is part cult leader and all new age, Lincoln encounters similar assholes who decide to pick on him. Not wanting to fight back and instead retreating inward, Lincoln summons the spirit of Moira (Sierra McCormick), a girl bullied to death, who takes vengeance on Lincoln’s tormentors. Despite his hatred for his tormentors Lincoln disagrees with Moira’s view on how to handle them.
What resonates most in the film is how they take the rules of the film and it’s slasher character and use them to communicate larger ideas on the cycles of violence born from bullies. Moira’s power is a mirror effect between herself and her target, when she cuts herself those wounds appear on whoever at the time is her chosen victim. Likewise, if they hurt her the same damage is inflicted upon their own bodies. It’s a powerful statement on the nature of these sorts of interactions, making you look at all involved from the initial act to the resulting vengeance in a different way, thus elevating the film and these moments from the pure schadenfreude of similar fare.
It’s great to see a film that is both vehicle for its ideas and can execute a crowd pleasing visceral quality to its violence but does so never at the cost of larger goals like character and message but in support of.
Jason Suzuki is co-editor to Cinema Adrift.