Movie Review: The Hamiltons

The Hamiltons
Director: Mitchell Altieri & Phil Flores
Released: 2006

My Analysis: Really fantastic.

This film is going to be difficult to talk about without spoiling it to some extent. I'd rather not spoil it, because it is one of the best horror films I've seen in quite some time. Certainly one of the best 5 or so I've watched in the last year. So - maybe you shouldn't read this. Maybe you should go watch the film.

The Hamiltons has a distinctly indie-film tone to it - very coming-of-age family movie. Maybe something like Little Miss Sunshine or something. This tone is jarringly incongruous since the opening credits play over a scene of a girl hog tied in a basement somewhere.

Francis Hamilton, the main character, is a troubled teenager. His parents died some time ago and he's been living with his older siblings ever since. They had to sell the family farm and they've moved six times in the last year.

The bit about moving six times in the last year is just sorta slipped in there. There's no explanation given, except that one of the brothers (Wendel) recently spent some time in jail for "biting some guy's ear off."

The coming-of-age tone is sustained throughout the film, but you quickly realize that something strange is going on. Wendel attacks a couple of road tripping young ladies and ties them up in the basement. Frances and then the oldest brother David both see this and don't react much at all. In fact, David seems pretty pleased about it.

Well, anyway - long story short. They're vampires. It isn't quite clear exactly how things went for them when their parents were around, but apparently their parents had a pretty fancy scheme for dealing with the whole vampire thing without having to constantly sneak out of town and go into hiding. Since their parents died the siblings haven't been able to keep it together. They wind up killing transients, random folks, and eventually people in their neighborhood. At some point they have to leave town, change their name, and relocate.

Frances is horrified by all this. He considers exposing his sibling to the police but can't quite bring himself to betray his family. Until, of course, the blood hunger whatsit come on him, as apparently is common with late teenage vampires. After his first feeding, he is at peace with himself and his family.

The effect is one of deep, deep alienation. Frances asserts that he and his siblings are sick, diseased. While he does come to terms with this, the cost is cutting himself (and his family) off from the rest of humanity. I'm real found of alienation films, and this one take the genre to a whole new level.