For some, Halloween is just a holiday, a brief period of time when the neighborhood is suddenly adorned with frightening accoutrements and houses become inundated with sugar-craving visitors one night of the year. For others, it is the holiday, a celebration of ghouls, spirits, and all things macabre, ushering in a chilly autumnal atmosphere and signaling the beginning of the end… of the year. With spooky season comes a natural uptick in scary movie viewings, whether it be holiday classics replayed in their annual rotation or new discoveries looking to make a good first impression. In the case of the latter, a film like Hallowarrior is not looking to reinvent the wheel. Halloween movies may be an oversaturated market, but for writer/director Ben Sottak’s feature-length debut, he’s looking to deliver a love letter to the holiday, backed with some haunting ambience and gory encounters. Small-scale, brisk, and unassuming, Hallowarrior nevertheless makes for a very satisfying watch, offering just the perfect amount of diverting entertainment for those who stumble upon in on streaming.
In a post-apocalyptic world, an unexplained catastrophic event has seemingly wiped out much of the human race, with hints that the inciting event may have been some sort of viral contagion. It’s an incredibly bleak reality, but it’s not enough deter Pumpkin (Milly Shaprio, best known for playing the unfortunate sister from Ari Aster’s Hereditary), a teenage girl who keeps up appearances of a once-normal world, particularly when it comes to celebrating Halloween. Inspired by home movies and memories, Pumpkin carves up seasonal gourds, leaves out buckets of candy, and decorates her farmhouse with eerie embellishments — except she’s using the desiccated corpses of her folks instead of plastic, store-bought skeletons. Dubbing herself “The Last Girl on Earth,” Pumpkin also makes regular radio broadcasts in an effort to reach anyone who will listen and offering a spooky good time to those who visit her home. With four years having passed and no real change to the shape of her existence, Pumpkin decides to finally end her life. But then her radio suddenly transmits audio, offering the sign of life she has been eagerly anticipating. When the static on the radio ultimately leads to unexpected guests in her home, Pumpkin discovers she is not as alone as she once thought, and her nightmarish Halloween night is only just beginning.
For the first reel of Hallowarrior, Sottak keeps Pumpkin on her own, laying out a routine that involves riding her bike into a deserted town and scavenging for supplies, including a trip to a long-deceased neighboring farmer’s barn. The unknown virus has decimated food supplies, leaving only candy for Pumpkin to subsist on. It’s no way to live, and she knows it, which is what brings her to finally building the courage to put a gun to her head when it becomes clear the situation will not get any better. But Pumpkin’s suicide plans go awry when her home is invaded by intruders, which includes Thalia (Shannyn Sossamon), Royce (A.J. Bowen), and “daughter” Wendy (Ajani Russell). After a tense initial standoff, Pumpkin eases off the trigger of her gun, welcoming the strangers in for a meal of sweets, chased with the contents of her parents’ liquor cabinet. But the niceties don’t last forever, as the intruding clan reveal themselves to be hungering for more than candy, leaving Pumpkin to fend for herself as Thalia and Royce escalate their aggression.
Other threats eventually emerge and extreme acts of violence follow, with the final 30 minutes of Hallowarrior switching fully into survival mode as more visitors arrive at the farmhouse, putting Pumpkin to work as she booby-traps her house. Sottak is clearing working on a limited budget, shooting the majority of the film within the confines of Pumpkin’s home, but he scores big with moody seasonal iconography, keeping sets designed with jack o’ lanterns, ghosts, and other haunting visuals, including a brief detour into a hallucinogenic sequence. Aiding the cause is Shapiro, who gives an appealing lead performance as Pumpkin. Hallowarrior is brief, running well under 80 minutes pre-credits, but it keeps things moving along nicely and smartly never overstays its welcome. Sottak doesn’t threaten to enter the Halloween canon with his debut, but viewers seeking a late-night watch rich in holiday paraphernalia and blood to spare will be happy to spend a long hour with Hallowarrior.
DIRECTOR: Ben Sottak; CAST: Milly Shapiro, Shannyn Sossamon, Ajani Russell, AJ Bowen; DISTRIBUTOR: Shudder; STREAMING: October 16; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 20 min.
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