In this short, sharp, comedy-horror-siege movie, youngish couple Jenny (Haley Leary) and Lucas (Chris Mayers) are the newcomers in a clean-cut \u2013 or is it? \u2013 suburban neighbourhood, having moved away from the big city. Lucas is a world-class red-flag-ignorer, while in contrast, Jenny is adept at spotting the signs that something is off. When the perky moustachioed head of the local homeowners\u2019 association Jerry (Julian Smith) invites the pair to a party celebrating the equinox, he assures them \u201cit\u2019s to DIE for!\u201d in the tone of voice Ned Flanders might use in a Simpsons Halloween special. Jenny immediately asks the reasonable question: \u201cWhy would you say it like that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Roles are soon reversed at said homeowners\u2019 association party, as an ample helping of the local moonshine blunts Jenny\u2019s natural caution, leaving Lucas to notice that they seem to be in the early stages of a wacky horror film. Hold the Fort jumps pretty much straight into the action, with straightforwardly drawn characters essentially replacing elaborate backstory or scene setting, allowing the film to clock in at a lean 75 minutes \u2013 if you\u2019re in the market for a movie you can start watching at 9pm and still get an early night, that\u2019s certainly a point in its favour. On the downside, the breezily sketched characters don\u2019t have the time to earn a place in anyone\u2019s heart, making for a sense of weightlessness; it doesn\u2019t feel like anything happening here massively matters, even if the ensemble cast scream in shock and surprise and meet grisly deaths on a fairly regular basis.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This is horror in the tradition of high-end internet sketch comedy: if one joke doesn\u2019t work for you, don\u2019t worry, another will be along in about 30 seconds. Investment in individual characters\u2019 survival is somewhat moot; you\u2019d be just as happy with an entertaining death as a hard-won survival. With enough practical gore to keep things interesting, alongside cheap but judiciously employed digital effects, this is lightweight but zippy and enjoyable genre fare.<\/p>\n
Hold the Fort is on digital platforms from 29 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In this short, sharp, comedy-horror-siege movie, youngish couple Jenny (Haley Leary) and Lucas (Chris Mayers) are the newcomers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-655474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}