Hurt (2009) - 2/4

Hurt is a standard American Gothic evil-orphan-girl picture with the ambition to say something, an ambition that's subverted by its chosen exploitational format.

A complicated family situation is made more complicated by the arrival of a foster child. A woman (Melora Walters) has two nearly-adult children and they're all moving in with her childhood foster brother. He's offering her a place to stay at his home/scrap metal yard while she awaits the forthcoming compensation money from her recently-deceased husband who was her other childhood foster brother. Indeed. Before her husband died, it seems he had been trying to adopt a young girl (Sofia Vassilieva) into his family to get her away from her abusive mother. Strange events ensue. Of course the audience knows it's the girl, so it's only a matter of how long until the characters find out and of why the girl is doing it. And you can probably guess the latter already.

Writer-director Barbara Stepansky does have something to communicate about how family members can hurt one another, in ways as obvious as physical abuse and more subtle ways like irresponsible spending, disregard of property and privacy, or neglect. These are Gothic themes. And in good Gothic fashion, with a modern hint of feminist awareness, we see a family torn apart (almost literally) by the hurt(s) beneath the surface. It's difficult to guess at how radical a claim Stepansky is aiming for: the oppression of traditional family forms? the horror of "broken" families? The naturally exploitative mould of a horror film makes it difficult to say, as we the audience are encouraged to be horrified by the little girl when the themes appear to be heroizing her. The form is working against the matter. The most curious thing about the story, coming from a female writer-director is just that the absence of the patriarch is the catalyst for all the horror.

As a horror film Hurt is not terribly successful, nor is it terrible. It is more of the same without much distinction or inventiveness. The weakest member of the family becomes suspicious of the brat, who is busy with increasingly malicious mischief until she can strike. There are no surprises to be had. As is often a problem with these films, the little girl comes off as far too mature. Vassilieva was seventeen at the time and it shows. Her voice and manner, as well as the dialogue written for her, are beyond any pre-pubescent girl. This is particularly true when she begins to explain her motivations: those words sound more like the screenwriter's motivations to me.

The acting is always the last thing to fail in a film and that's no exception with Hurt. All of the actors, especially Vassilieva, despite playing a character far too young, do very well in their roles. Anyone who has dealt with foster children knows they can be quite manipulative; Vassilieva captures that, down to the parted-lipped glares and casual snooping. The more dialogue and absurd activities she's given, however, the more difficult it becomes for acting to save the character from seeming the silly artifact of a screenwriter.

The title of course gives the game away: Hurt isn't about any particular character but about the myriad ways to hurt in a family context. In Hurt, most of those ways involve scrap metal.

2/4