Movie Review: The Hatred (2017)

The movie stars Sarah Davenport, Andrew Divoff, Darby Walker, Shae Smolik and Gabrielle Bourne.

My wife and I had a kid-free evening yesterday and had planned on taking advantage of it. However, after having dinner, we realized there really wasn't much else to do around town and ended up home by 8:30.

As a result of that, we once again ended up on the couch watching a movie and wound up picking out this one. Unfortunately, it, much like our date night, wound up being a bust.

I honestly feel this movie had some potential. There were some creepy moments in it and the remoteness of the farm they were staying on could have potentially added to the feeling of overall hopelessness. However, the execution lacked something and, instead of being scary, the film was a big mess.

One of my biggest problems with the movie was the way it just seemed to drag on, especially in the beginning. Not only did the filmmakers insist on giving us the whole backstory of Samuel Sears (Divoff) and his family, two thirds of the film seemed to be the women hanging out around the house, drinking wine and talking. 

Even the film's attempts to set a dark vibe got old after a while. Seeing a spirit watching the women from behind a curtain is creepy. Seeing the same thing happen multiple times just seemed redundant.

It also didn't help that, during all this build-up, the movie failed to give any of the women some real depth. As my wife commented as we were watching this, the main protagonist, Regan (Davenport) just seemed fake (and this is a movie that desperately needed a strong lead) and the rest of the supporting characters were a step down from that. It's really hard to care if someone is killed or not when you have no reason to like (or dislike) the person.

The movie itself also seemed to lack any focus. The writers had three great movie villains, an oppressive Nazi father, an oppressed daughter who was murdered and buried somewhere on the property and a stolen artifact with the ability to turn fear into evil. But, instead of focusing on one (which they should have done), they tried to use all three and the end result of that was none of those villains got enough attention. They would have been better off picking one of the three and just getting rid of the other two.

Had this movie just been about the Nazi farmer or his murdered daughter, I think it would have had a chance at being better. But, mostly because of the way the film drags on in the beginning, I'm not sure if it would have been enough to make this watchable.

My Grade: D