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Contributed by Sara Schieron
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Thursday, 18 May 2006 |
THE HAMILTONS is a heart rending coming of age film that's been
aggressively sandwiched in a gruesome horror. A fantastic example of
what low budget gore can be, THE HAMILTONS' was filmed in Petaluma and
made by SF Film's directing "team" The Butcher Boys.
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Revolving around the youngest of four kids, Francis is not like the rest of his family. After the Hamiltons lose their mother and father, the kids are forced to move from town to town, social worker to social worker, trying to settle all the while knowing they never can. Taking and hiding vagrants and hitchhikers, it's clear the family has a secret that's borne of necessity and the allusions made to what happens behind closed doors becomes a consistent source of tension for the audience and a source of sadness for the protagonist.
Playing upon the conventions of family melodrama, the film is packaged like a painful coming of age story. 16-year-old Francis is constantly differentiating himself from his family, saying, "I'm not like them." Francis hardly seems far from characters like Jim Stark [James Dean] in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (but less violent) or even Bud Stamper [Warren Beatty] of SPLENDOUR IN THE GRASS (but less sexual). He's both torn about his family affiliations and horrified about leaving. His nearest siblings are twins, both symbiotic and incestuous. In the middle but hardly stuck Wendell and Darlene are the most self-realized and destructive of the family. Hedonistic and uncompromising, they make sex appeal and violence look awfully similar. Meanwhile, elder brother and head of the house: David (think Mitch Wayne [Rock Hudson] in WRITTEN ON THE WIND minus the charisma) is hell bent on appearing as "normal" as possible while clearly having little idea what "normal" actually looks like. While the feeling of low cost is all over this film, the acting is strikingly good, clearly aided by very good characterization. The actors play off of each other so well and the confinement of the locations (we hardly leave their hell of a suburban cottage), feels vibrant and surprising, as though there are very many complex rooms in this under explored prison.
If a horror film's strength is its power of suggestion, then THE HAMILTONS' strength lies in its deft use of pun. Baiting the hook with stories that smack of "family unity", "survival", "nature or nurture" and "identity", THE HAMILTONS uses these generic and universal ideas like keys to our unconscious and when we finally discover the family plot, we're just as sorry for Francis' lot as he is.
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