And Then They Go Boom

Generally, when you write any kind of story you need some kind of hook. It’s one thing to say, “I’m going to write a love story about two kids finding each other in high school,” for example, but to get these two kids together you need some kind of external circumstance that drives them towards each other. A story isn’t a story unless it has a force that incites the incident. Real life might be full of random moments and people just deciding to talk to each other over lunch, but we’re talking works of fiction and the audience expects something more than just the mundane. If it was just normal life we wouldn’t feel the need to read about it.

It’s hard to come up with an inciting incident that would grab the audience in harder than a spontaneous explosion. Everyone is just going about their days, having a regular, normal life, when suddenly one among their number pops like a big, wet, red balloon and suddenly everything is thrown off. How do you handle that? How do you recover? Can you even? And when people can just pop like balloons, does that make you want to change something, follow up on a choice you might not have otherwise made?

That’s the storytelling thrust of Spontaneous, the 2020 black comedy horror film written and directed by Brian Duffield. Based on the novel of the same name by the same name, the film follows one character, Mara (Katherine Langford of Knives Out and Cursed), as she sees a fellow student (and then another, and then another) explode in front of her. It explores her character, her life, and the very demented (delightfully so) ways that she deals with this horrible, awful thing that just keeps happening in her home town. It’s hilarious, and awful, and a really solid movie that really digs into what an incident like this would be like, and because of that it really works.

Mara is just one of many students sitting in class one day at Covington High when, suddenly, fellow student Katelyn Ogden explodes. One second she’s sitting there, the next she pops like a balloon, splashing everyone in the class in a spray of blood and viscera. Naturally, everyone in that class is taken to the police station, forced to change out of their blood-drenched clothing, and then questioned by the police to see if they know any reason why this could have happened. None of the students do, although Mara (Langford) can’t help but crack jokes about the situation because if you can’t laugh about it you’re going to end up crying.

With no clue as to why Katelyn exploded, all the students are sent home and, eventually, allowed to return to school. In the days that follow Mara starts hanging out with Dylan (Charlie Plummer), a guy from her class that has always had a bit of a crush on her but, up until now, never got up the nerve to talk to her. The two are very similar in personalities and hit it off. That gives each of them someone to cling to when, over the next days and weeks, more of their fellow students, all from their class, begin exploding. The U.S. government steps in and tries to solve the problem, but what it really means is these kids are all ticking time bombs and, maybe one day, they’re all going to pop. So they might as well make the most of the time they have left, however long that is going to be.

Spontaneous grounds itself, and finds a spark of darkly comic sensibility, through the perspective of Mara. She’s our main character, the one that witnesses all the events and has to process everything that she sees. From the first exploding teen to the last, Mara is there, taking in the horrible scenes and having to live with them. She deals with this through humor, biting sarcasm and deeply horrible humor, which gives the film its comedy-horror styling. Without her this would be a straight up horror film, but because of Mara we can find the humor in the horrifying.

Mara is played fantastically by Katherine Langford, an actress who up until this film I hadn’t paid much attention to. Yes, I’d thought she was fine (if under utilized) in Knives Out, but her starring turn in the Netflix series Cursed wasn’t great, largely because Cursed itself was awful and there was little the actors involved could do to save that piece of crap production. Here, though, Langford shines, giving Mara creepy, fabulous charisma that makes you want to hang out with her despite (and because of) the fact she’s finding the humor in this horrible situation.

Playing opposite her is Charlie Plummer as the love interest, Derek, and he’s pretty great in the role, too. Admittedly the film doesn’t invest as strongly in him, but that’s largely because this is, effectively, a YA production based on a YA novel, and that means we’re getting a third person limited story focusing solely on our lead, female character. Derek is great, a fun guy that works well when paired with Mara, but this isn’t his film, it’s hers, in her voice, her perspective, and her style.

The film gets a lot of mileage out of the two of them, building their relationship up even as kids explode and blood flies everywhere. They aren’t the popular kids, just a couple of wallflowers that hang out on the periphery, so their disaffected personas and detachment from much of what’s happening allows them to crack jokes and have fun. But they both play the seriousness of the situation well. For all the humor they throw at the scenario, it’s pretty clear that it’s draining them too. There’s real worry, under the surface, that either of them, or their friends or loved ones, could somehow be next, and the only way to get through it is to be funny and love each other.

The film uses the spontaneous explosions not just for gory effect, though, but also as a way to dig into the existential fears of life. The students exploding acts as a metaphor for the unknowable, what comes next and how any of us could end and never see it coming. Stress seems to be a factor that drives the kids to explode, and that’s something all of them feel. Stress over their lives to come, the fear over what’s next, what they’ll do when they graduate at the end of the year. You get the feeling like even if they didn’t literally explode, many of these kids were so stressed out they were liable to metaphorically explode the second they left the comfort of their high school lives. The film is solid because it balances that with the humor to keep you invested in this story.

Honestly, I think it’s only in the last act that the film starts to struggle. It’s here that Mara suffers a loss too great to ignore and, because of it, her whole attitude changes. The sharp and sarcastic girl spirals, and everyone around her is forced to distance themselves lest they get dragged down with her. It makes sense as her disaffected personal was masking a lot, but once that mask slips the film changes its tone and energy substantially. It goes from being a darkly comic horror film and becomes a drama that shares the same characters and setting but feels so different. I wouldn’t say it runs out of steam completely, but the film gets pretty shaky at this point and much harder to enjoy.

With that said, the character exploration of Mara at this point is solid. The film feels different but it does let us seem more of her character and it gives Langford more to chew on. I’m of two minds if I like this last act or not but, at the very least, I do respect the film (and its creators) or following the story to its natural conclusion so we can explore all aspects of the scenario. It’s not the direction I would have taken the film if I’d made it, but I can at least understand why the film goes this way when it does.

So Spontaneous isn’t perfect in all regards, but it is a really solid film. It’s smart and snappy, drenched in blood and, for much of its runtime, a really enjoyable experience (for anyone that can appreciate comedic horror). It’s powered by great performances with the actors delivering the dialogue perfectly. Even with a shaky last act it’s hard to deny all that the film gets right. It’s a great watch with a story that really sucks you in. In the end you’ll leave the movie caring about Mara, hoping she finds happiness (and not explosive stress) as she moves to the next phase. And it’s hard to hate a film that leaves you happy to see the main character move on so well.