Sean Parker
In the spirit of Fear Street, or The Dark Pictures Anthology games, comes the Fresh Hell Presents, three back-to-back releases from writer/director Quinn Armstrong (Survival Skills). Armstrong has taken a trio of recurring horror themes to form an informal trilogy loosely connected through their location and a few scenes. The first film on the ambitious consecutive three-week release schedule is The Exorcism of Saint Patrick, which released on August 30, Wolves Against the World followed on September 3, and the final title, Dead Teenagers, released last week on September 10.
Armstrong’s “Fresh Hell” Trilogy will catch horror lovers’ attention, appearing with posters that look like books out of the Goosebumps series, rocking differentiating color bands, and eye-popping, pulpy art. The films lean into the Roger Corman and Hammer Studios spirit of filmmaking, offering macabre stories and fantastic makeup effects by Wrong Turn (2021), Shelby Oaks, and Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge wizard Dave Greathouse.
The Exorcism of Saint Patrick
In this soon-to-be American gothic of conversion therapy horror, a pastor (Steve Pinder) goes on a retreat to a secluded cabin with a gay teenager (Michael J. Cline). When he bullies the boy into suicide, the ghosts of the conversion cabin’s victims return to make him pay.
Conversion therapy horror is becoming a pretty modern trope, with the recent release of the incredible indie film Ganymede or the highly promoted John Logan movie They/Them, which drew a lot of attention when it was released a few years back. While They/Them may not have been what horror fans hoped for, there are plenty of reasons for horror fans to want the topic expressed subversively within the medium. A quick Google search on the subject will introduce even the most religious person to a cavalcade of first-hand accounts that vary from shocking to downright anger-inducing. The worst part is that conversion therapy is still happening in forty-eight out of the fifty states. This makes the topic extremely relevant. The Exorcism of Saint Patrick attempts to enter into the hypocrisy surrounding the harmful use of these tactics from that friendly-faced, holier-than-thou representative you’ve been told you can trust.
Armstrong’s first “Fresh Hell” film is really a two-hander going back and forth between Pastor Patrick and the boy charged to his care, who, it turns out, is also named Patrick. In the immediate moments opening the film, Pastor Patrick tries to sort the names out. He decides that the young Patrick will call him Pat, and the Pastor will refer to him as Trick. This subtlety of identity suppression is masked as confusion but assumes an innocent-looking misread that begins amounting to blatant disrespect. Even if you want to argue that Pastor Pat is earnestly attempting to sort out any confusion, there’s no one else there to confuse. Only the two Patrick’s would be referring to each other, and if you’re calling for Patrick, you’re certainly not calling to yourself.
Misnomer aside, Pat pushes Trick on almost everything that defines who he is. In one scene, the Pastor makes the overweight Trick carry a backpack full of rocks, then offers a sort of parable about the weight of lies, but it feels very much like passive-aggressive bullying. The atmosphere is never comfortable, and insensitive, off-hand remarks from Pastor Pat jolt The Exorcism of Saint Patrick into an evocative watch. Whether it be the Pastor belittling Trick’s identity by calling it “acting out” or by assuming Trick isn’t happy because of his identity and not because he was born into a household where his parents would rather send him to a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a stranger, where anything could go wrong and eventually does as Pat resorts to psychological tactics, linking pleasurable behavior to illness ala A Clockwork Orange.
In the first film of “Fresh Hell,” Armstrong pronounces his presence. Hallucinatory imagery and moral accountability help create a social commentary on power dynamics. While faith can be a tool for hope, Armstrong shows how effortless it can become weaponized to promote fear. After the tragedy, we begin to see a different story about avoiding accountability develop, where it’s up to the viewer to see the immoral components in a much larger machine.
The Exorcism of Saint Patrick offers a story that is plenty divisive but not unprecedented. While the idea of an exorcism film evokes certain elements, Armstrong subverts many of those expectations to gnaw at a much larger issue and succeeds for a portion of the time. The movie has an almost Bergman-esque chess-with-death-on-the-beach quality, the way the characters oppose each other in the beginning, but fizzles out a little as the cabin inhabitants awaken to seek their revenge. The idea of a priest and a boy alone in a cabin feels a little taboo as it stands already, but this space feels like purgatory. That sensation is carried throughout the “Fresh Hell” Trilogy.
The Exorcism of Saint Patrick | Official RED BAND Trailer | HD
In Theaters and On Digital September 30 A pastor takes a young gay teen to a cabin to perform conversion therapy. When the pastor’s harsh tactics bully the teen into taking his own life, the ghosts of the conversion camp’s many victims return for vengeance. Written and Directed by Quinn Armstrong.
Wolves Against the World
In shifting gears from The Exorcism of Saint Patrick, Wolves Against the World pitches a similar subversion and another two-hander experience, for the most part. Those looking for a werewolf movie will be thoroughly disappointed as the “wolves” from the title are a bit more metaphoric, referencing a band name. The “Fresh Hell” Trilogy’s second entry tells the story of aging drummer and former neo-nazi Louis (Michael Kunicki), who attempts to put the past behind him after the death of one of his bandmates. We watch Louis in support groups, sharing his experiences in school classrooms and monetarily hitting a wall while trying to remove the tattoos that once defined his convictions. In an attempt to seek closure and finally shut the book on that chapter of life for good, Louis reconnects with his former bandmate Anders (Quinn Armstrong), who invites him back to the cabin where they used to practice and the site of their former lead singer Helvete’s (The Bikeriders’ Jordan Mullins) death in a fiery satanic ritual.
There’s plenty of dread drenched over Wolves Against the World in the way Louis wants to grow but doesn’t want to leave his former friend behind. They both incurred the rantings and ravings of their lunatic lead singer, who would throw dead squirrels at the audience during their performances while casting derogatory slurs at them. Having left Anders with Helvete when he stormed out years ago, Louis has an ingrained belief that he needs to do right by Anders, not knowing how extreme Anders has become. Anders coaxes and baits Louis, trying to get him to indulge in the music-making process, which continuously finds its way back into uncomfortable, fascist territory. When Louis puts it on Anders, Anders reveals he’s moved beyond his old views, though it seems clear to Louis that whatever he’s into may be similar, if not potentially worse. Through contrasting journeys, Louis tries to evolve into a better kind of man, whereas Anders transforms into a new breed of wolf.
Beginning with an incredibly visceral transformation, Wolves Against the World is a film about change and proving yourself worthy of a second chance. This second film in the “Fresh Hell” Trilogy bounces back and forth from Louis’ days in the band, a found footage phone recording in the woods, and back to Louis’ modern era repentance. The Narrative is sound, but occasionally, the flashbacks make it hard to determine where we are in the timeline. Luckily, Armstrong features Helvete in most of them to straighten things out. While the flashbacks help establish Louis’ sincerity and are necessary in this type of story, the found footage bits don’t hold the same gravity.
While some nuanced ideas about growth and power in the film offer sound story moments, Wolves Against the World does a lot of meandering. The result is something monster-movie adjacent, with Louis’ homecoming being a cautionary tale of accountability. In leaving Anders behind, did Louis inadvertently create this Anders?
Regardless, as Armstrong attempts to build tension through the rekindled relationship of Anders and Louis, he doesn’t offer enough emotional resonance in the backstory to elicit the effect he’s trying for. The pair’s inferred brotherly closeness just doesn’t bind the viewer to the story in a heart-tea way. Contrarily, Armstrong delivers a fantastic and occasionally unhinged performance that’s worth the time.
Wolves Against the World | Official RED BAND Trailer HD
In Theaters and On Demand September 6 Two members of a defunct neo-Nazi metal band reunite at the site of their bandmate’s suicide. One sinks into depravity and grievance and one tries to atone for what he has done.
Dead Teenagers
In an almost complete one-eighty from the middle “Fresh Hell” entry, Dead Teenagers fu*king slaps! It’s a tonal vibe change from the serious social commentary structure of Armstrong’s first two films and a juxtaposition into straight fun, subverting and deconstructing slasher stereotypes with a meta-commentary and an extremely clever, nuanced, and non-preachy subtext relating to teenage bullying.
Dead Teenagers begins with Mandy (Jordan Myers) waking up in her bed with the whole world ahead of her as an upbeat albeit ominous alt-rock-pop track (featuring vocalist Erin Bednarz) considers what might happen “If We Die Young” over the opening credits. Immediately, Armstrong had me grinning with his intro of 90’s horror soundtrack spoofing, followed by the overly innocuous nature of hopeful teens, complete with archetypal characters played by slightly older actors in a cabin in the woods celebrating spring break. Queue my Andy Warhol impression as I jokingly cry, “How banal!”
Predictability is on the menu as Dead Teenagers begins, but that’s the game. From the dialogue decisions to every production choice, it intentionally looks and sounds like we’ve seen it before. That is until Mandy begins to break the fourth wall, seeing things that frighten her and don’t entirely make sense. A piece of tape that says “camera one,” a buried underground cable, and a metal pole with another piece of tape that says “Exorcism.” Mandy begins to gain insight into the other realities from the “Fresh Hell” Trilogy, feeling the frailty of her own in the process, coinciding with a breakup with her jock boyfriend Ethan (Malum’s Angel Ray).
Obvious plot points begin to unfold in the foreground, like a harbinger cop (Beau Roberts) checking up on the group to tell them about an explosion on the other side of the mountain the group is vacationing. worker that got hurt that will surely never come their way to murder them, who will surely come back in a later act. Or the round-robin of sexual advances from the recently split-up lovebirds that causes them to hit on their friends. While Ethan gets read the riot act by Jamie (Maya Jeyam) for hitting on Nicole (MaryCharles Miller), Mandy forces Ben (Tony White) to make out with her in the woods until he disappears on her. Mandy once again experiences some strangeness as she finds the Dead Teenagers script. Pursued back to the cabin by a guy in a welder’s mask, an accident caused by Mandy’s discovery of the production’s power line causes the maniac welder to kill himself, leaving the movie’s reality stuck in a paused state.
Confused, the group of friends feel a sudden rush of emptiness as if there’s a loss of purpose. When the characters consider making competent decisions, like calling the cops or running to find help, they have a moment of crisis and shut down instead. The total collapse of each character’s personality is almost a page out of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo (Pulse). They seem depressed and stricken with identity crises. If they’re not fulfilling their archetypal role, who are they?
When Mandy gets around to reading the script and learning the truth about what her friends think about her, she becomes radicalized not to suffer the same fate as her character. The only problem is that time has stopped in the wake of the killer’s death, and the only way to restart it is to continue the script from the moment they diverged from it. Even without a killer, the only way they find to get things back on track is by completing the scenes in the script.
This final chapter in The “Fresh Hell” Trilogy fully encompasses the cosmic nightmare of growing up and not dying young, as its song might suggest. The reality of the mundane catching you off guard, realizing the race to get out of school leads to a race to retirement after that. It’s existential dread on that kind of level, and it’s felt through the crisis posited by who these kids are without a script to stick to. As Mandy feels awakened by this new knowledge, Jamie feels an intense need for violence, finding the best friends against each other in trying to figure out how to keep the story going.
While Armstrong’s “Fresh Hell” trilogy contains a recurrent theme, it took longer to see in Dead Teenagers. With The Exorcism of Saint Patrick and Wolves Against the World, the social themes are prominently displayed. Dead Teenagers comes at you from a different angle, leaning into who the characters appear to be on the surface, and as they find they’ve been assigned those roles (not unlike Cabin in the Woods), who they’ll become in the wake of that knowledge. The film subjects them to a sandbox where they have absolute freedom to keep up the façade or find out who they truly are, not unlike how social media can oppress teenagers to behave and act in the context of their Facebook profiles’ personalities. So, when something devastating changes that glossy veneer, cliquey followers might counter with avoidance and removing their subscriptions when support is needed.
There are also more subtleties in Jamie and Mandy’s friendship as the two become more at odds with each other. Visual cues that resemble bullying or Jamie’s tonal inference as she stares daggers into Mandy as she calls her babe. Mandy will no longer subscribe to Jamie’s way of thinking nor follow her blindly in her quest to end the movie as it’s written.
Trauma also serves as a metaphor for violence in schools in Dead Teenagers. Statista reports there were eighty-two school shootings in the United States in 2023, and one can only imagine how kids today are forced to normalize the government’s response to school shootings. How do kids handle going to school with a friend one day and realizing they won’t ever see them again the next? It’s the kind of trauma that doesn’t go away, no matter how much you try to pretend things are ok.
Dead Teenagers is the most fun part of the “Fresh Hell” trilogy; however, you need to see the whole thing to understand some of the movie’s bits and pieces. Like all of the films in the trilogy, there are some plot holes and avenues unexplored that I would have loved to have seen Armstrong venture down. The finale may get away from Armstrong a little here, but the idea is there, quite affecting and possibly putting the horror viewer on blast for consuming a film called Dead Teenagers. If you’re looking for a very different take on a subgenre that’s pretty much seen it all, Dead Teenagers will be that for you.
Dead Teenagers | Official RED BAND Trailer HD
On Friday the 13th – In Theaters and On Digital Five teenagers are stalked by a killer in the woods. But when the killer accidentally dies, the kids discover they cannot leave until they’ve fulfilled the script of the movie they’re trapped in. They must decide who among them lives and dies.
As a whole, the “Fresh Hell” Trilogy was an interesting watch full of unique ideas built around a spectacle of issues afflicting our world, highlighting the fight against bullies and oppressors. I’m a huge fan of movies utilizing this kind of high-level writing style that makes you consider the horrors of the everyday world. Armstrong does that very well, and I hope he continues to excel creatively at this level. It seems like an auspicious start to a beautiful horror career.
All three films of the “Fresh Hell” trilogy are now available on PVOD. Cranked Up Films, the movie’s distributor will also launch Cranked Up TV this fall, a streaming service catering to their indie horror catalog. All three “Fresh Hell” films will stream on the service when it becomes available.
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