Spontaneous [2020]
“Scared people all want the same thing: To survive.”
“Spontaneous” is a teen, rom-com, coming of age, horror, scifi, satirical narrative on what it’s like to be a teenager in the modern age. It’s too many pieces… and yet, they all work. Writer director Brian Diffield manages to pull this busy mess of genres into a 100-minute journey that will make you laugh, cry, and want more for the young people facing these threats [well… not EXACTLY these threats] every day.
When their classmates begin to spontaneously combu... well you'll see... The students of Covington high school have to face some difficult decisions. In a world when any day, any instant, may be their last due to a freak happening that nobody understands… What is the life they want to lead, and how do they want to be remembered?
Spontaneous masterfully walks the thin line that many satires attempt of poignant and powerful/ funny and metaphor, without tipping too far to either side and ruining the fun or losing the message. Adapted from a novel of the same name by Aaron Starmer, Spontaneous tackles several difficult subjects with tact, grace, solemnity, and an incredibly intelligent comedy that keeps you from dissecting the subject matter too deeply until you're far too involved to back out.
Wonderfully shot by cinematographer Aaron Morton, Spontaneous feels like a lived-in world and the performances on screen make it feel like it has lived-in people. Not without their movie quirks, characters are lively, believable, and interesting while establishing some modern boundaries by breaking old tropes. While the way scenes are framed, colored, and presented helps sell all of the wacky, sweet, and horrifying happenings on screen, it’s all brought wonderfully to life by some stellar editing by Steve Edwards. Fourth wall breaking, clever scene transitions, and cuts that trust the audience to know what happened between moments make Spontaneous a well-paced adventure that packs a lot of material into its hour and forty-minute runtime.
Satires always have a lot to say – or at least they want to – that’s kind of their point. For me, where many lose their way is that they get so caught up in trying to maintain adjacency to the thing they’re trying to satirize that they forget to have an identity of their own. While worrying that the audience won’t get the joke, they become the joke themselves… and not in a “ha ha” way. Spontaneous avoids these pitfalls and carries itself with a poise and uniquity that most films of this genre lack. It’s silly, but it isn’t GOOFY, and it’s got something to say, but it isn’t PREACHY. Few films manage to be a total blast from start to finish while still having a powerful message hidden beneath their shiny colors, bangin’ soundtracks, and quippy dialogue.
If you’re looking for something genuinely funny, sweet, and provocative without the mind-numbing monotony of typical rom-com-ing of age stories, this film is well worth your while and contains a message that truly needs to be heard. Uplifting, upsetting, and uproarious; Spontaneous is a film that will leave you with a lot of things, but, maybe most importantly, it will leave you with a drive to be who you want to be in this moment, not the next one.
“Nothing is fair but it’s a beautiful world and I am happy I get to be here.“
