Starring: Timothy Haug, Christie Griffin and Miles Taber
Directed by: Jared Allmond
Rated: NR
Running Time: 87 minutes
Buffalo 8 Productions
Our Score: 1 out of 5 Stars
Albie (Timothy Haug) and Penny (Christie Griffin) are in dire straits. They’re not only unhappy in their marriage, but are seemingly unhappy in most of their life choices, especially Albie who whines constantly about how he has yet to make it big with his script writing. The miserable married duo decides the best thing they can do for themselves is take a night off from adulting and parenting, but car troubles force the couple back home. Upon arrival at their home, they’re greeted by another couple who are complete strangers to Albie and Penny. The couple tells them that this is their home and they need to leave through loving smiles and an oddly upbeat attitude. What happens next is…well…repetitively dull because the movie spins its tires without getting anywhere remotely interesting.
“The Hive” bills itself as a home invasion thriller, even though the smiling strange couple didn’t apparently break-in, nor do the police seem interested in helping when Albie gives them a call. To make matters worse, Albie and Penny go to a nearby relative’s house, in the neighborhood, and the relative seems relatively calm about the entire situation. Nothing about this screams home invasion and by the time Albie and Penny hatch a plan, the movie u-turns into a sci-fi film without any real reason. Like any sci-fi/horror film, the absurdity of the situation is supposed to match a real-world idea or feeling. In “The Hive,” it’s painfully obvious from the first few minutes that the film is about a mid-life crisis and the horrors of realizing you weren’t meant for marriage, family and a white picket fence. Does it do anything unique or interesting with that? No.
Despite taking place in suburbia, the film does nothing with the setting or the idea of misery in the burbs. The injection of sci-fi elements feels like a random idea to make things interesting instead of massaging it cohesively into the film’s narrative. I kept wondering if maybe there would be a grand payoff, but instead the film whimpers to the credits. There’s a lot of things wrong with “The Hive,” but I don’t feel like faulting anyone besides the writer and director because its most egregious issue is attempting to use other genres and clichés simply because it has no original ideas of its own.
Despite an interesting set-up, “The Hive” does nothing outside of its first 10-15 minutes of exposition. It seems perfectly content with cyclical dull scenes of characters repeating dialogue and information. While “The Hive” may end up as an example of what not to do in scriptwriting and filmmaking, the trailer and poster for this film might end up as an example of false advertising.