I am not the first — and I won't be the last — to retrofit pre-pandemic imagined stories to these unprecedented times. But the grief and guts of Spontaneous are uniquely suited to 2021.
In writer-director Brian Duffield's dark romantic comedy, released to limited fanfare last October amid social distancing restrictions, seniors at Covington High School start to explode. Literally. It's the old spontaneous human combustion myth, reimagined as a vehicle for some light horror in an offbeat coming-of-age story.
Against a backdrop of global trauma, these sudden explosions can stand in for any number of threats.
The film explores consuming existential dread through quirky teen angst (a tried and true combo, if there's ever been one), but with a sadness and sweetness individual to this story.
Katherine Langford stars as Mara, your classic 17-year-old, alt-rock-loving heroine. Her classmate Katelyn, the first kid to pop like a tick, "was never particularly explosive," Mara quips. The unpredictability of who will explode and why is central to the plot and Mara's cynical comedy stylings.
Ostensibly, that's because Spontaneous was conceived as a ham-fisted metaphor for the United States' epidemic of school shootings or teen deaths by suicide. But Aaron Starmer, author of the novel on which Spontaneous is based, has never specified his inspirations.
And so, against a backdrop of global trauma, these sudden explosions can stand in for any number of threats to contemporary audiences — physical or psychological.
After Katelyn's untimely demise, Mara and her peers cope with the fallout. Their reactions range in severity and tone. Mara is annoyed when she has to wear her Carrie Halloween costume sans fake blood to a school dance. "Katelyn fucked it up," she offers to a sea of dirty looks. Meanwhile, love interest Dylan, played by Charlie Plummer, sees the dire circumstance springboard his decision to tell Mara about the crush he's had on her for years.
Through invasive medical experiments and a forced quarantine (yeah, that bit felt a tad on the nose) as scientists scramble to find out what's going on, Mara and Dylan fall deeply in love.
Their blossoming connection stands in stark contrast to the grounded dread of the repeated, bloody explosions. They're not jump scares. Rather, they're progressive and expected turns for the worse that take an ever-increasing toll on Mara, Dylan, and their friends. That Mara eventually turns to drugs and alcohol to cope seems inevitable. That her parents don't intervene is understandable.
Spontaneous is not a film that ties up loose ends. That very issue plagues reviews of the 2016 book to this day and has bothered plenty of viewers. But that's precisely what I've come to love about it.
With the world reopening, the predictability of isolation is giving way to infinite threats of every ilk. The misery of dirty sweatpants is being replaced with social anxiety. The pain of what could have been swapped for the pain of what is. Just like the Covington kids bracing themselves against their unseen foe, we are staying ready to weather the worst. Whatever that next worst thing might be.
Spontaneous offers no actionable solace. It doesn't profess any tricks to warding off terror, sorrow, or even discomfort. No "love wins" hook to make existing more palatable. But it does conclude that living, in all its messy, horrible spectacle, is a worthy endeavor. That's enough for right now.
Spontaneous is now streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.
