A horror-comedy that perfectly evokes the schlocky charm and madness of B-movies has been a rare sight since the last decade, save of course for Shin’ichirō Ueda’s 2017 low-budget film-within-a-film comedy, One Cut of the Dead, the last ingenious and delightfully funny effort I could name and recommend. Something you watch with as little information as possible and something you’ll most likely give another go right after seeing it just to re-encounter its freewheeling magic.
Into this sweet spot jumps Hold The Fort, the new hilarious monster mayhem from writer-director William Bagley, which made its world premiere at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival. The movie is a follow-up to the director’s 2021 feature debut, The Murder Podcast, another horror comedy about two amateur podcasters who get embroiled in a supernatural (mis)adventure as they begin to probe a hometown murder.
Whereas Bagley’s first feature leans more on the comedy than the horror, Hold The Fort strikes a better balance between its slapstick gag and thrilling gore. The story, co-written with Scott Hawkins, follows a young couple, Lucas (Chris Mayers, star of Netflix’s Ozark) and Jenny (Haley Leary, of The Out-Laws), who trade the big city life for a suburban one, as they settle into their newly acquired house, which means that they’re now part of a homeowners association, to the dismay of Jenny, who’s still on the fence about the relocation and, more crucially, lifestyle shift. She worries that the HOA might turn into something like a hovering office boss, policing their every move, such as how they beautify their front yard or when they should take out their garbage bins, not to mention the insanely bloated 500-dollar monthly membership fee that the couple has to pay. He says otherwise and insists that their neighbors are “super chill.”
But the HOA should be the last of their concerns, as the neighborhood, with its neatly trimmed lawn and pristine picket fences, secrets something far more sinister and urgent: a portal to hell. Every year during the Equinox, the sleepy town becomes a host to all sorts of beasts bent on taking over the world, like a Halloween gathering taken to the extremes. The government is aware of the entire situation and reckons it’s best to leave the fate of humanity to an HOA whose best feature is a soon-to-be-built swimming pool. Of course, the couple, especially Lucas, is left disoriented by the sudden onslaught of hellish creatures, after they get invited to what they first reckon as a welcome party at the town clubhouse. In the HOA’s defense, though, all of it is detailed in the property contract that Lucas fails to read.
With its modest 76-minute runtime, Hold The Fort spends its first 15 minutes introducing the protagonists, including HOA President Jerry, portrayed with boundless personality and nerdy appeal by YouTube comic Julian Smith, the real MVP of this silly monster freak-out. The rest that follows is a bloody acid trip, suffused with guts and brains splattering on the floor and on Lucas’ pretty face. There are the usual monsters like witches and werewolves, but the movie also introduces some more odd supernatural entities like kung-fu spirits turning its hosts into blood-spewing fighters that can only be killed by a wooden sword, self-detonating kamikaze bats, and the stick man (so-called leader of the dark army).
It is kind of expected that the arcs and backstories of the characters won’t be fully explored not just due to the film’s duration but largely because of how the writing functions as a transparent setup for a fleshy action-packed ride. Even interrogating the picture from “the timely concern of home-ownership,” as the synopsis puts it, can only result in a rather insular insight. But to some extent, that is fine. The film works because it refuses to take itself so seriously. If anything, it wears its foolishness and absurdity like a badge. Which of course means that any internal conflict or emotional fracture between the characters, like the implied differences between the central couple in the narrative’s exposition, will be neatly resolved once all the monstrosities are taken care of.
Past this, Hold The Fort is heavy on computer-generated visual effects that often seem off-kilter and ridiculous, though that is not to the film’s detriment, as it actually adds to the visual grammar and overall tone, just as the cringe-worthy one-liners—particularly from the instinctive neighbor, Ted (Levi Burdick), and the hired assassin, McScruffy (Hamid-Reza Benjamin Thompson)—heighten the madcap levity of the scenes. At the same time, the rest of the ensemble register like they’re hyper-aware of the kind of movie they’re in. Part paean to the magic of B-movies and part attempt to reignite the allure of campy horror, Hold The Fort makes a perfect case for having a good, wacky time in the cinema, even if that means dabbling in show over substance.
Hold the Fort recently played at the Fantasia International Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the Fantasia site for the title.
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