“Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn.”
-B.R. Haydon
Love and death are the two most powerful forces in human experience. They are the engines of our stories because they are the engines of our existence. Our hopes, desires, heartbreaks, and fears so often hang on these two factors—ever-present and constantly in tension. Horror, more often than not, preoccupies itself with the latter but from time to time, a really great horror love story comes along. Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s Spring is not only a great love story but an acknowledgment of the eternal balance of love and death that connects us to each other, the ancient and ongoing human story, and perhaps even the infinite.
Spring is quintessential Moorhead & Benson, who from their first feature, Resolution (2012), to their most recent, Something in the Dirt (2022), have explored vast and often difficult to grasp ideas through intimate and accessible stories. Their films are exercises in the great tensions, balancing the mystical and the scientific, the inscrutable and the relatable, the cosmic and the personal, the infinite and the intimate. And considering the low-budget, independent nature of their collaborations, their films are minor miracles, possessing a magical quality in the innovative nature of the visuals, expression of ideas, and emotional impact. Spring is no exception, managing to express regenerative and evolutionary theories, vast cosmic themes, and an examination of the human condition all packaged in a moving and satisfying love story. And at the heart of it all are those two most powerful of forces—love and death.
The story itself begins with the two entwined in the complex feelings involved with the death of the main character Evan’s (Lou Taylor Pucci) beloved mother. As she approaches her last breath, the two share a few moments of deep affection, but her death sends Evan into a tailspin. Later in the film we learn that he had also suddenly lost his father to a heart attack not long before. On the night of his mother’s funeral, Evan and his friend Tommy (Jeremy Gardner) head to the bar where Evan works to have a few beers and attempt to drown their sorrows. While there, he picks a fight with a drunken loudmouth and gets himself fired. The guy he beat up finds out where he lives and sends the cops after him. With no job, no prospects, and nothing keeping him in L.A., Evan hops a plane for Italy and finds the love of his life. But of course, there is a catch. Isn’t there always a catch?
From the moment Evan sees Louise (Nadia Hilker) he is struck by the proverbial lightning bolt, and as an audience, so are we. Yes, she is beautiful, but it is more than that. Part of Louise’s allure is the mystery around her, and the mysteries only deepen as Evan spends more time with her. She is drawn to the past, spending time in museums looking at classical paintings and ancient relics. She has travelled and studied all over the world, speaks about a dozen languages—some of them dead, has held many jobs, is a scientist fascinated by old evolutionary illustrations, has two different colored eyes, and refuses to be photographed. The closer she and Evan become, the more guarded she seems to be about certain aspects of herself. She never lies to him, but she does withhold elements of the truth. The storytelling is brilliant throughout this section of the film because we are given just enough information to be drawn in. We know that something strange is going on before Evan does. We see that after the first time they make love, Louise sneaks out of the house while Evan is asleep and does…something…to a stray cat. At first, she appears to have a skin affliction that seems to be getting worse and uses a syringe to medicate herself in some way. In private moments, we see that it is far more than just a rash, but something much more monstrous and bizarre.
Parallel to the budding romance between Evan and Louise, which mostly takes place in the evenings and night, is a commentary on living and true love from Evan’s day job on a farm where he works to provide for his ongoing stay. Angelo (Francesco Carnelutti) who runs the farm had lost his wife some time before in a car accident—again, the convergence of love and death. He calls women the “jewels of the world,” a sentiment that Evan agrees with increasingly the more time he spends with Louise. We also see strange happenings in nature on the farm along with the motions of life, death, and new life as winter comes to a close and spring approaches. Flowers suddenly bloom, caterpillars appear out of nowhere, and a fruit tree bears both oranges and lemons side by side. Here we see the sweet and the sour, love and death, in balance and tension once again.
As Louise’s affliction worsens, she abruptly breaks up with Evan, who is concerned about her having found a discarded syringe on the bathroom floor. He returns later to discover her on the floor transformed into a writhing creature, part octopus, part lizard, and any number of other animals found on land and in the sea. After an injection that returns her to human form, Evan asks, “Are you a vampire, werewolf, zombie, witch, or alien?” Her response is surprising—“Human.” She goes on to ask, “are you afraid of me?” His response is an honest and relatable “Yeah,” but his affection for her leads him to add “but explain it to me.” She does explain, but this is where those complex ideas that Moorhead and Benson are so good at come into play. In a nutshell she is an immortal who sheds her skin every twenty years or so into a new body. As this change nears, she goes through increasingly bizarre transformations into creatures from the evolutionary past and becomes less able to control when and how they happen. To keep them at bay, she injects herself with stem cells and eats raw meat. Though she does turn into a monster, her pheromones can cause flowers to bloom and the world to spring back to life.
This central conceit has fascinating possibilities. It uses scientific theories to explain ancient beliefs in the gods and goddesses of spring. Louise herself inherited the gift, curse, condition, however it can be described, from her mother who perhaps had lived for centuries before giving it up for love and dying in Pompeii under the ash of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Was her mother the beginning of belief in Persephone, the goddess who spends half the year in Hades bringing autumn and winter but returns life to the earth in the spring? Is the “ex” Louise had in Mexico who “always had to conquer something” the conquistador Hernándo Cortés? During her travels in the United States did she happen to cross paths with one Howard Phillips Lovecraft while in one of her transitions? There is certainly a Lovecraftian element to the proceedings in Spring, specifically in the look of the various creatures Louise becomes.
In the third act of the film, Evan is determined to spend as much time with Louise as he can. They have until the spring Equinox before she changes for the next twenty years into someone new with the aid of a new set of embryonic stem cells. He is convinced that she is the love of his life, but Louise, who has loved and lost more times than Evan can imagine, is not sure if she loves him in return. She believes that anything she feels for him is chemical and hormonal. He persuades her to take a road trip with him. “You get until the earth dies. I get one more day.” To be honest, I don’t entirely understand the whole embryonic stems cells and transformation thing, so I admit that I may have some of those details wrong, but what I do understand is the beauty and simplicity of the love story as it unfolds in this final day.
During this section, the film takes on the feel of a travelogue, a bit like Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) if Julie Delpy was an immortal being going through a twenty-year transformation cycle and occasionally tried to bite off Ethan Hawke’s face. There is also an infusion of humor as Louise’s changes happen without her awareness and others observe their interactions. As Linklater’s lovers discuss various philosophical and experiential ideas, so do Evan and Louise. Her centuries-long life has given her insights into the human condition that have both jaded her and given her a zest for living in the moment. Many of these observations give Evan pause, prompting him to think about the finite nature of his own existence. Louise also tells him of a theory that if she does not get new cells and endures through the final transformation, she may retain the same body and continue on with her current identity. If this happens, it may well signify that her love for him is true and not merely chemical.
The final scene is one of the most moving scenes I have seen in any movie, horror or not, as love and death intertwine once more. Before reaching Pompeii where they are to spend the final moments of winter together, Louise warns Evan to run as the spring sunrise approaches because her final transformation will be the most fearsome and deadly creature of all. As they sit in the shadow of the dormant Vesuvius, he refuses to leave her. She lays her head in his lap and asks him to tell her more about the finite. The camera moves in on his face as he movingly discusses the beauty of knowing there will be an end and we hear the sounds of transformation, but he continues, his love for her keeping him near her. The mountain releases a puff of ash as if the earth itself is shaken by the moment. As he finishes his heartfelt monologue, he looks down to find her very human hand grasping his.
Maybe I’m a sentimentalist or a hopeless romantic but this is what movies can do—make the cynic believe in the power of love. In this moment, all the big complex ideas, the cosmic themes, the evolutionary science are set to the side and all that matters is Evan and Louise. Love has won. There are two great forces in human existence—love and death. And the greatest of these is love.
The post Love and Death: Why Lovecraftian ‘Spring’ Is One of the Most Romantic Horror Movies Ever Made appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.