Kristy (2014)
A young college student who remains on campus alone during Thanksgiving falls prey to members of a cult intent on hunting her and killing her.
With its simple premise and highly suspenseful execution, Kristy is a back-to-basics adrenaline-fuelled exercise in lean, mean tension. Anthony Jaswinski's screenplay takes a few moments to set the scene, introduce protagonist Justine (Haley Bennett), outline her situation in the broadest of strokes, before it gets down to the business of terrorising her – and the audience. As the campus empties, we follow Justine as she bids farewell to her boyfriend and goes about her day, complete with a melodically scored montage of her dancing along empty hallways, studiously poring over books, running, swimming, doing her laundry and chatting with the friendly caretaker (James Ransone) and security guard (Matthew St Patrick).
Things are grand, if a little sad and lonely for Justine. She misses her family but takes it in her stride and keeps herself busy. When she heads off campus for a drive to pick up snacks from a petrol station, she has an unnerving encounter with Violet (Ashley Greene), a strange, aggressive young woman. From here, director Oliver Blackburn accelerates the tension as the security guards are bumped off and all means of technological communication with the outside world are blocked. With Justine completely isolated, the cult members – decked out in hoodies and creepy foil masks - move in for the kill and the narrative becomes a prolonged, increasingly taut cat and mouse chase sequence. Justine uses her familiarity with campus to continually just-about-evade them, using only her resourcefulness to defend herself. That the action all plays out in eerily deserted spaces you would expect to see bustling with lots of people, adds to the tension. The scene where Justine hides in the library is particularly fraught…
Jaswinski's minimalist screenplay and Blackburn’s assured direction ensure a no fuss, stripped back approach to storytelling. All the information we are given, including some sly foreshadowing, is disseminated in the opening credits and first few scenes: a cult is preying on lone women, nicknaming each victim ‘Kristy’, and killing them as part of some obscure ritual (‘Kill Kristy, kill God’). They film the chase and the carnage and post the footage online for other cult members to view and comment on. When Justine has an encounter with one of the members in a petrol station, she is selected as the next victim. They see her as being in keeping with their preferred ‘type’ of victim: pretty, smart, vulnerable and defenceless, occupying a place of social privilege. However, thanks to sparse information gleaned from the opening act, we know a few things about Justine they don’t…
Justine is far from the defenceless, privileged target they assume her to be. She’s from a low-income household, enrolled on a work to learn program (she holds a job in the college canteen, washing dishes to pay for her education). She’s seen pushing herself physically (swimming, running) and intellectually (a brief montage of her engaging in lectures). The reason she’s still on campus over Thanksgiving is because she can’t afford flights home. She is also unwilling to accept offers from her friends to join them and their families for the holiday. So, from this we know she’s hardworking, driven, resourceful, level-headed, willing to do whatever she needs in order to get by, and can be stubborn. Haley Bennett’s engaging performance goes a long way to bring life to quite an underdeveloped character.
We’re introduced to Justine as she and her boyfriend are reading in bed, and she struggles to understand some poetry by Blake. He urges her to connect more with her emotions and give in to ‘feeling’ instead of intellectualising everything. He seems more in tune with the emotional side of himself, openly telling Justine he loves her, while she struggles to reveal that part of herself. Much later, when Justine is trying to evade the cult on campus, a tragic incident sparks a moment of realisation for her, and she becomes proactive, using what she knows to outsmart, lure and overcome her aggressors. The hunted becomes the hunter and it’s immensely satisfying when she combines her resourcefulness with a vicious, channelled rage and determination to not be their victim.
There’s a hint of subtext regarding online misogyny and incel culture, and how this can manifest in society, with a woman-killing cult giving all their victims the same name, stripping them of their very identity. The cult’s actions are never explained, nor is their need for the victims to be women. The inclusion of Violet in this cult is interesting but never explored – is she a victim of internalised misogyny?
If it’s a high octane, no fuss horror you’re after, Kristy will tick a lot of boxes. While it misses a few tricks in terms of characterisation, underuses James Ransone, and has the odd plot hole, it more than compensates for these shortcomings with its rarely-lets-up suspense.
