Horroris a genre based on impact, with each project trying to make watchers feel something — typically terror — with many attempting to use the fears at their center to educate on some vital issue. There have been countless movies that do this well, but there are unfortunately even more that bungle their topic completely andsend people away with a worse understandingthan they had before. Nowhere is this more dangerous than youth-focused content, particularly around stories of self-harm likeAdam Egypt Mortimer’sSome Kind of Hate.
ThisTubifilm’s premise of a ghostly girl exacting revenge by shifting the violence she inflicts on herself to her victims, at first seems like an extremely toxic portrayal of how bullying impacts teens today. But, while it does falter in spots, the movie actually becomes a deconstruction of these kinds of stories, one that doesn’t try to turn kids’suffering into dramatic spectacles(like many of its contemporaries do) but instead highlights through its bloodshed the disastrous effects of bullying today. It’s a shockingly thorough takedown ofmoviesthat refuse to handle topics like these with the care they deserve, and with the startling gore and figure at its center, it creates a brutal,completely necessary metaphor of bullying’s effects on teens today.
We’ve All Faced ‘Some Kind of Hate’
In a horror genre rife with stories about moody teens running away from some deadly antagonist, viewers may thinkSome Kind of Hateis just a redux of this over-saturated plot. It follows Lincoln (Ronen Rubinstein), a troubled young man who, after retaliating against his high school bully, is sent to a desert-set disciplinary school where ‘dangerous youth’ like him can be rehabilitated. There he unfortunately encounters more of the toxic behaviors that he faced before, with a particularly nasty bully making him question what’s the point of trying anymore — which is when he meets Moira (Sierra McCormick),an eternally furious specterwho apparently took her own life at the camp years before. After seeing Lincoln getting bullied in a way similar to how she was, Moira decides to take revenge on his behalf; from dragging a knife through her own throat to painstakingly knocking out her teeth while a victim writhes on the ground, her discomforting ability offersmany scenes of genuinely unsettling gore.It’s made all the more uncomfortable because audiences are seeing a person enact this violence against themselves, with the waySome Kind of Hatestresses the severity of these actionsnot only creating many horrific moments, but offering an unflinching portrayal of bullying like viewers have never seen before.
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Many projects try to detail the devastating impact of childhood bullying, but it’s unfortunate how many of these shirk the realistic effects of this trauma in favor of dramatic storylines. This is epitomized in the series13 Reasons Why; not only was it critiqued for telling its impressionable audience that harm against themselves is a way to ‘get back’ at bullies, but the series evolved into a multi-season drama that traded in genuine mental health advicefor unhealthy dramatizations of teenage abuse.Some Kind of Hateoriginally appears to be doing the same by pairing themes of self-harm with such a fantastical villain, but as watchers learn more about Moira and the kids that surround Lincoln at this camp, they learn the film’s true message: bullying takes the life out of those who experience it. Moira represents how attacks like these can turn young, innocent teens into shadows of their former selves,with thisconstant abusedistorting not only their worldviewbut the children themselves,as they’re forced to adapt to a world that sees them as some kind of offense. Not only through the revelations about Moira’s backstory, but how Lincoln and his friends turn into shells of their former selves due to bullying,Some Kind of Hateuses the grueling bloodshed at its center to represent just how disastrous bullying is on the youth who experience it today.
‘Some Kind of Hate’ Shows the Horrors of Bullying
WhileSome Kind of Hateuses its terror as a metaphor for bullying, that doesn’t mean the film completely ignores trying to be a typical ‘scary movie.’ The results of this vary; while they do offer some genuinely unsettling scenes, many emotional moments areundercut by questionable jump scaresor nonsensical creepiness, unfortunately making the movie resemble some of the projects that have previously mishandled these topics. Yet while it has some messy moments like these, overall,Some Kind of Hatebecomes a visceral portrayalof how bullying completely twists its victims.While children, of course, don’t become vengeful ghosts like Moira, through forcing audiences to confront things like self-harm and verbal abuse, the film offers an unflinching portrayal of the traumaso many real kids are faced with on a daily basis. It recognizes the utter horror that bullying truly is and brings that to the forefront, not only creating a scary film but stressing to audiences the severity of bullying today.
Some Kind of Hate
