Have You Fed Lenny?
Main Cast: Cory Knauf, Samuel Child
Director: The Butcher Brothers
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
THE HAMILTONS comes across as a very atypical horror movie. The story opens with Francis Hamilton (Cory Knauf, SWEET INSANITY) showing us video clips of his family that he’s taken in order to document their daily life as he gives us the necessary exposition,
“What does it mean to be happy? To be content in the world around you? Mom used to say it was family. That family was the heart of everything, even existence. Without it, there’s nothing. She would always have these simple answers that somehow would sound so brilliant. And then she died. My father died along with her. Shortly after that, my brother David had to sell the farm where we grew up. Now we’re just trying to be an ordinary family. Trying to figure out where we fit in the world. And for me, I’m trying to figure out where I belong, right now in this exact moment.”
THE HAMILTONS is Francis’s coming of age story. The youngest sibling, he’s trying to see his oldest brother David (Samuel Child, LURKING IN SUBURBIA) as the father figure, and David is so set on trying to present a façade of normality for the world. Meanwhile there are two teenage girls whom David is slowly bleeding to death in order to feed “Lenny”, chained up in the basement. And his other siblings, the twins Darlene and Wendell (Mackenzie Firgens, RENT, and Joseph McKelheer, APRIL FOOLS DAY), are even worse.
“The twins. They’ve always been distant from the family. Wendell is the main reason why we move a lot. He just got out of jail for biting some guy’s ear off in a Cheesy Chuck’s pizza parlor up north. Darlene is just as mean but more refined. Like when we were kids, she used to lock me in the closet just to hear me scream, and hours later would let me out, pretending she was the one who saved me. And I always fell for it.”
As David fights to maintain the charade, Wendell and Darlene live with abandon, superior to everyone around them and only slightly concerned with the world learning their secret. Meanwhile Francis just wants to find his place in the world, sure as anything that it’s not among his siblings. As the days go by, it seems as if Francis may be able to find some sense of normality with Samantha, one of the girls chained in the basement.
THE HAMILTONS is a very smart horror movie, keeping its secrets close, letting slide minute details here and there, which the astute observer will most likely pick up on. Delving too far into the movie’s plot will likely reveal secrets you’d rather not know because they can indeed lessen the impact of the story.
I admire THE HAMILTONS for trying to step away from the standard slasher clichés and tired kill scenes, for trying to tell a real story, that just happens to be a horror story.
The movie is written and directed by “The Butcher Brothers”, which is the name under which Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores write horror and, at the time, THE HAMILTONS was their second movie, preceded by THE LONG CUT in 2002.
The Butcher Brothers work well together in creating a very interesting story about Francis Hamilton and the troubles he faces as a teenager with no one to turn to in order to help him through the process of making an identity for himself that doesn’t consist solely of being “the youngest Hamilton.” Francis wants to be Francis, but first he has to discover just who that is, and hopefully he can do it without all the outside influences from David who just wants him to at least act normal, or the twins, who seem hell-bent on corrupting him at every turn. Knauf turns in a great performance as Francis and really helps make the movie what it was. But he certainly doesn’t do it on his own. The cast is all excellent as the actors bring these characters to life, both as individuals and as a family, dysfunctional as it may be.
We see the action through a combination of third-person POV, with bits of Francis’s first-person video camera shots for a closer, more revealing look at his family, and this alternating of styles enhances the sense of isolation Francis feels.
When I originally saw the trailers for the first of the 8 Films to Die For, THE HAMILTONS was the one that struck me the most as something I’d probably like to see, and while I wouldn’t say it’s turned out to be my favorite of the series, it’s in the top three. It’s certainly a horror movie that doesn’t play like a horror movie–not all the time anyway–and is able to enjoy a little subtext without it seeming overbearing or like an afterthought. There are a few shots toward the end that don’t work for me, but as a whole I really dig this movie and definitely recommend it. If you find yourself in a slump, just wishing for something to come along and stand out from the crowd, THE HAMILTONS is the movie you’ve been looking for.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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