Some Kind of Hate

This is the best horror I’ve seen since—since Deathgasm, I guess. But Deathgasm was playing it for laughs. This one, it’s out for blood. And there’s gallons of it. What I dig about it the most? It’s not the Holes setting, it’s not that the main guy could be the fire-kid from Sky High (really, he’s Michael Pare in his Eddie and the Cruisers days), and it’s not that this feels like “Danny Zuko” goes to reform school, and Sandy’s already there,” though any of those would be more than enough reason for me to be falling over myself to say good things about this movie. No, what works the best, I think, it’s that Some Kind of Hate manages to take the same social commentary/hot topic issue as Unfriended did (bullying), but then build it right onto the backbone of the first Friday the 13th. Seriously. Watch this movie, tell me it’s not an update on ‘counselors getting their just desserts.’ And, like that wouldn’t be enough, then Some Kind of Hate has the nerve to come up with the flat-out coolest mechanism for killing I’ve seen since—maybe since Freddy? This is ghost-fingers crawling out of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s head-cool. Really, halfway through this one I had to stop, check who wrote it, because everything about it feels Jeffrey Reddick. Remember that bathroom-kill in Tamara, at the party? That’s the closest I can come to explaining Some Kind of Hate. I couldn’t have been more impressed. By far—and I think I’ve seen most of the big and small horror so far (save The Boy)—this is my favorite horror of the year. It’s my Starry Eyes for 2016. And, coming on the heels of the last surprise slasher, It Follows, man, I don’t know: after Cabin in the Woods, we were all wondering how can the slasher still show it face, right? (to be clear, for me, there’s Scream, then there’s Cabin) But then here came You’re Next, and It Follows, and Cub. And now here we are at Some Kind of Hate. It’s got that All the Boys Love Mandy Lane throwback feel somehow, that cues up instant nostalgia, but it’s completely new at the same time. I can’t think of any way it could have been better. It’s so well-written, and well-shot, and well-acted—everything is clicking here. This is one I’ll be watching again and again. I hope all the other slasher fans out there do as well, as we need to support quality stuff, if we want more of it to keep happening. Check the trailer, then get to streaming: