The audience is, once again, given
a behind-the-scenes look into Louise’s secrets as she heads out to a remote
area inside a cavern—transforming into her ghastly appearance. She somberly sacrifices a rabbit while performing
a strange ritual, devouring the creature as she once again recovers her
youthful human form. A week into having
officially become a couple, Evan shows increasing curiosity over Louise’s
studies—buying a book from the museum that has a woman with different color
eyes on the cover. Evan gives the book
to Louise, pointing out the similarities between her and the cover girl, though
Louise dismisses it in a suspiciously nonchalant manner. Louise quickly leaves their outing together
when she starts noticing her transformation, stumbling through some back alleys
as vines spontaneously grow on the stone buildings around her. An asshole tourist stumbles upon Louise and
mistakes her for a prostitute, unwisely walking up to her in this feral state
and quickly becoming her next meal—his corpse being left on the beach she and
Evan were the night before.
Whatever the true secrets behind
her transformations are, two things are clear:
- Louise is uncontrollably dangerous
- Louise cares for Evan
Put these two together and it’s
easy to understand why Louise decides to break up with Evan despite clearly not
wanting to. Evan is understandably mad
at the situation, even outright confessing to Louise that he loves her, though
she does not return said feelings. I
find this whole situation fascinating as it’s directly contrary to what
romances focused on a male protagonist usually do. The audience is given the necessary information
to understand both genders’s position.
One may not understand Louise’s condition by this point, but one does
comprehend the reasoning behind breaking up and why it pains her to do so. Likewise, one can understand Evan’s
frustration and heartbreak. The
perspective is balanced between the two genders, something I thoroughly appreciate.
Evan returns to his job at the farm
only to discover, through a great bit of deadpan comedy on Angelo’s part, that
the authorities are looking for him to deport as he's been in Italy too long:
Evan: Policia?
Angelo: Immigrazione.
Evan: Immigration? Do I need to
worry?
Angelo: Si.
Evan: Should I run!?
Angelo: Si.
With nowhere to go, and wanted in
both Italy and America now, A desperate Evan goes back to Louise’s house for
help, where he discovers...this.
Evan is understandably terrified yet
seeing Louise suffering overcomes his fear as he grabs the needle she's trying
to cling and—after nearly getting sliced and diced—is able to inject and revert
her back to human form. There's a great
bit of dark humor from this serious situation as the scene cuts to the pair
sitting opposite each other at the dinner table in complete silence, only for
Evan to break it with an understandable, yet outlandish opening statement:
Evan: Are you a vampire, werewolf,
zombie, witch, or alien?
Louise: Human.
Louise reveals everything she’s
been hiding in an overwhelming manner for both Evan and the audience, leading
to a very intense exchange as a distressed and freaked out Evan walks through
the town trying to calm himself as Louise continues explaining:
Louise: Evan...I posed for that painting
almost two-thousand years ago.
Evan: Ha! This is the crazy I can't
handle.
Louise: My eyes are like this because of
hereditary heterochromia. Do you know what that means?
Evan: I don't know. You, like, give it to
your kids or something?
Louise: Correct, but I've been giving it to
myself. There are things I have found out in the last two decades that I don't
understand entirely, and you may find them upsetting.
Evan: You're trying not to upset me? You
dumped me and became a monster.
Louise: Okay, you win one argument. Um, do
you know what embryonic stem cells are?
Evan: Cure stuff. You abort babies to get
'em.
Louise: Not necessarily, but you kind of
get the idea. They replicate for a long time and
can be used to heal or maintain your whole body.
Evan: So that's what you are? You're like
"Newsweek" fountain of youth cells or something?
Louise: Sure, so my body uses the cells so
I stay the same age and heal very fast.
Evan: But... embryonic cells? Are you
f***ing pregnant?
Louise: I conceive and about a week later
I'm a healthy twenty-year-old with fifty-percent new DNA. I stay the same age for about twenty years and then I need new cells.
Evan: And you dumped me once you got 'em.
Louise: You wouldn't have recognized me
anyway. I'll have to start a new life. I always do, every twenty years.
Evan: Why tonight? Why even get to know
me?
Louise: I didn't want to hurt you.
Evan: Ha!
Louise: God damn it, I mean physically.
Before my body uses the cells, it goes crazy. I rot, I turn into creatures from
our evolutionary past, I f***ing kill stuff!
Evan: Hey, we both have tempers, huh?
Louise: Yeah, but mine's worse. And
something is off. And I thought I could control it, but... f***, I got... I got
desperate and I tried occult books and...I ate my rabbit.
Evan: What!?
Louise: Okay, it's not magic, okay? There's
adult stem cells in cat brains and rabbit intestines, testicles.
Evan: Well, use those!
Louise: I do, but they aren't as effective.
Evan: Okay, well, whatever I saw on your
living room floor, that was not the physical laws of the universe.
Louise: Look, just because you haven't seen
something before, Evan, doesn't mean it's supernatural. Evan. Can you please
stop walking away? Please?
Evan: Give me a minute.
Not really knowing what to do, Evan
tries to call his old friend Tommy (Jeremy Gardner), but he’s too high to
understand Evan’s fantastical situation that he explains bluntly
straightforward. Through fate alone,
however, Evan spots Angelo mourning at a church for his deceased wife—a woman
he loved dearly and has missed throughout the film to a point where he refuses
to try dating anyone else. Perhaps
realizing the importance that Louise means to him, Evan goes back to her
patiently waiting to discuss the situation.
Louise reveals that she possesses
something chemical similar to pheromones that can affect both people and
plants—causing plants to blossom and people to become attracted to her,
explaining Evan’s sudden infatuation.
She explains how in about one day her process will complete, and she
will become renewed into a new person that shares his DNA. During this process, she will go through many
transformations and become very dangerous at certain points. These factors, in addition to becoming a
whole new person who will essentially be his blood relative, are why they must
break up and go their separate ways.
Since both are avoiding the cops at this point (Louise having murdered
that man earlier), Evan pushes that they spend one last day together driving through the countryside.
Spring fully reveals the mystery
over a good half hour before the end credits.
This allows the couple to actually interact with all the monstrous
details in the open—no secrets between them.
The atmosphere takes a turn once again from romance with horrific
undertones, to romance with comedically-horrific undertones as Evan begins
barraging Louise with all sorts of curious questions about her situation:
Evan: You never told me you had a car.
Louise: It never came up.
Evan: What else do you have?...in
two-thousand years you must've invested in something.
Louise: Okay, I have an apartment in Rome.
In Paris. In Bali.
Evan: So you're slummin' it with me right
now?
Louise: It actually is a f***ing nightmare.
I have to constantly come up with new federal ID numbers, will stuff to
myself... it's a nightmare.
Evan: Right. What's your original name?
Louise: Uh, uh... I don't remember.
Evan: Really?
Louise: Well, do you remember the address
of your childhood home?
Evan: Yes, I do.
The film practically becomes a
different animal with everything out in the open, having so much new comedic
potential available. It wastes no time
taking full advantage of its situation at hand.
Concept: Louise is a monstrous
amalgamation of creatures from her evolutionary past.
Usage: The pair stop by a little
ocean poolside, talking romantically as grotesque tentacles drip from Louise's arm into the water below.
Concept: Louise is at least
two-thousand years old.
Usage: Louise points out herself in
ancient artwork, playfully joking about how Evan is jealous over her having
slept with at least one-hundred men.
There’s a downright hilarious scene
where the two go to an old church Louise hasn’t been to since its “grand
opening”. Louise, having found someone
she can be fully open with in who knows how long, has a field day
enthusiastically expressing all the knowledge she’s gathered over the
millenniums. The excitement causes her
to get a bit sloppy as she remains oblivious to minor transformations.
Evan: Notices her growing a bulging eye
Um… Louise, did you bring your shots?
Louise: Yeah, there's one in my purse.
Evan: You should use it.
Louise: Why, do you see something?
Evan: … Yeah, a little something… Just do
it here.
The scene is comedy gold as Louise
continues eagerly conveying her knowledge while the needle takes effect, all
the while Evan has a mild freak out over other visitors noticing. One lady does, in fact, notice the situation,
telling her praying husband that “A zombie was doing heroine”.
Spring is kind enough to have Evan
give a clean recap of Louise’s complex situation all in a natural
manner—allowing the audience to get a better grip on the situation and stakes:
Louise: We should buy you some clothes now.
Evan: Why do you hate my shirt?
Louise: You don't listen.
Evan: Oh, I listen… Uh, let's see, I got
you pregnant. You can use those embryo cells to heal fast and live forever.
When you do that, you physically become half the man who got you pregnant. Um,
when you are pregnant, you turn into a cross between creatures from our
evolutionary past and a corpse. You could choose to use your adult cells, but
then you'd die someday, so...
Louise: You know, honey, just because you
listen to a few things doesn't make you Oprah.
Between the romance and comedy,
however, the film has got me on multiple occasions with a really good jump
scare. It works exceptionally well
because the shift in atmosphere, plus Louise’s situation being explained, leads
one to not expect such a startling bit of horror to occur anymore nor be as
effective. Yet the directors reinforce
their on-the-fly genre-shifting talent from Resolution, creating an unexpected,
strikingly effective scare. It’s
additionally worth praising the makers's skill at crafting the supernatural on
such low budgets—often cleverly hiding their low-budget CGI with shadows and
quick edits.
It turns out there is a way for
Louise to stay the same human she is now, and it all depends on her oxytocin
levels:
Evan: Well, how do you choose to use your
adult cells? Or your embryonic...
Louise: I don't. My... my body chooses.
Evan: Well, how does your body choose?
Louise: Oxytocin.
Evan: I'm totally lost again.
Louise: It's the hormone that makes women
fall in love and get maternal. And if it were high enough, survival reaction
blocks the embryonic cells and defaults into my adult stem cells.
Evan: You know that?
Louise: I mean I don't, but I'm not sure.
But I can show you the origin of the theory.
I appreciate how Louise still does
not fully comprehend her own mutation and is, for the most part, making guess
work on how it functions. It makes
sense, how would she have learned about her “scientific” physiology with
science has only really started to understand the normal human autonomy in the
past one hundred years (plus, it’s not like she can go to professional
scientists for help unless she wants to risk capture for experimentation). The lack of knowledge also keeps an air of
mystery and ambiguity to the film’s cosmic horror premise and allows room for
error in her explanations without bringing fault to the actual film. From her theories, however, there may just
very well be a way for her to remain as she is—but Louise points out the
obvious in the situation; “Evan, I really think you're great, but I'm not
giving up eternity for a guy I just met a week ago.” Her reasoning makes perfect sense—who gives
up immortality for a guy they just met—yet emotions aren't driven by reasoning,
and while Evan tries to play off his convincing as mere joking, he eventually
can’t help but ask her seriously to stay.
Louise takes Evan to her birthplace
in Pompeii and shows off her long since petrified family—having only survived
because of her hereditary immortality.
Her mother had once possessed the very same mutation yet gave it up to
be with Louise’s father—passing the gene onto Louise. Their dialogue here is a reversal of the
previous beach conversation, complete with a callback joke:
Louise: My oxytocin case study? I got it
from her. It's hereditary. She gave it all up for me and my father. I don't
want to die and I don't want to watch anyone die.
Evan: Well, at least you got the same
backstory as Harry Potter. That's pretty cool.
Louise reveals that she'll soon be
going through her final stages and will become the biggest and sharpest
creature Evan’s seen yet—her only advice being to run really fast when it
happens. Yet despite the immense risk
posed here and the transformation period almost upon them, Evan stays by Louise’s
side. Evan is, once again, about to lose
a person he cares immensely for, and it shows as his wording becomes more
desperate—getting down on his knees, begging Louise to stay while holding her
now decrepit arm in a scene reminiscent to his final moments with his
mother. Louise lays her head on Evan’s
lap as the camera switches to a close up of his face—inhuman sounds being heard
beneath as she seemingly begins transforming.
Evan remains holding her until the sounds completely stop, gently
talking to her throughout the process.
Yet when he looks down to see the new Louise, he finds the same woman
looking back at him smiling. Evan smiles
back, realizing that she's chosen love over immortality.
The ending is incredibly
heartwarming, and it strikes me that, throughout their last day together,
Louise could have very well been testing Evan—purposely transforming during specific
occasions and lying about the final
transformation as a way to see how devoted he is to her and if he truly loves
her beyond mere words and pheromones.
Louise's immortality has brought her knowledge, (ambiguous) fame, and
riches over the years, as well as loneliness.
Now she finally understands why her mother chose to give it up all those
millenniums ago. Evan has found his new
family—including the child that Louise now carries from not transforming—and a
fulfilling purpose in life. It's an
effective and appropriate way to display love at first sight within a story that
fits both characters ideally.
Spring is a beautiful film, full of
rich, realistic characterization, remarkable worldbuilding in such a limited
timeframe, a magnetizing romance between two colorful characters with fantastic
chemistry and an array of great comedic bits wound up into a supernatural
premise with effectively gruesome imagery and scares. The same film where an ancient being that can
transform into an abomination of many species, devours innocent animals and
murders humans, and can be grotesquely terrifying in appearance, is also the
same film that uses said being for wacky fish-out-of-water comedy and an
emotionally satisfying romance that leaves you feeling warm and fuzzy
inside. It takes true dedication to the
craft to take these vastly different genres and blend them together in such a
seamlessly effective manner, yet directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
succeed in ways I’ve never seen done before.
Spring is a great romance of the 2010s, a great horror of the 2010s, a
great comedy of the 2010s, a great spiritual drama of the 2010s, and a
fantastic film overall.
Great job writing this. Very well done. Takes the emotions I felt when watching (and after watching) this movie, and puts them into words. It is beyond anything I can say, to express how this movie has affected me since viewing it a few days ago. I don't think anything needs to said. Only felt.
ReplyDeleteI was deeply deeply moved by this movie. Love is much more then chemicals mixing around inside us. It is a decision. A commitment when everything goes wrong. I love this movie. It meant a great deal to me. It doesn't matter what happens to my wife or if she transforms into this or that. I have decided to love her. I have decided she is worth everything. No matter what....
ReplyDelete