Despite its title and a plot that involves a sorority house, Super Hot is not a skin flick. In fact, writer/director Taylor King’s (Devil’s Island) film gets its name from the pizza place our heroine Jackie (Kandace Kale) delivers for. Actually, she quits in the first five minutes to hang out with Sam (Elijah Cooke) and Kevin (Coleson Berlin) for the last two weeks of summer.
However when her neighbour Carmen (Sierra Michelle, Reap) who she has a crush on moves into her sorority, Sheridan House, a week early, she’s plunged into depression. Things become more complicated when she finds out Carmen’s housemates are vampires who plan to offer her up as a sacrificial virgin. Even with the help of Warren (Nobuaki Shimamoto, Nekrotronic, Hacksaw Ridge) a Japanese descendant of Van Helsing, rescuing her won’t be easy.
When we meet Jackie she’s wearing an Army of Darkness shirt under her uniform, Sam shows up in a Nostromo shirt. So right from the start, we know this is another geeks versus real monsters film. If that didn’t give it away a discussion about how the Marvel Comics would be cast if they were made in the 90s and a trip to a comic store get the message across. Unfortunately after spending much of the first act defining our leads as movie geeks, nothing is done with it. It all feels like padding to get the film up to feature-length. And Super Hot needs all the help it can get.
Super Hot never manages to generate any scares, a sense of danger or even some general excitement. It just plods along from Point A to Point B with a minimum of effort, complications or realistic behaviour. Even when it throws a couple of twists at us the film can’t work up any enthusiasm. Never becoming even intermittently exciting or so bad it’s funny, it’s just ninety minutes of tedium.
Much of this can be pinned on Kandace Kale. This is her only credit and it’s clear she had no idea what to do or how to express any emotion. She delivers all her lines in the same sullen monotone and her expression rarely changes. Granted the rest of the cast isn’t much better, but at least they try to express some emotion.
To be fair the script doesn’t give them a lot to work with. The characters have little to no backstory or motivation. Instead of wasting the film’s first half-hour, King should have used it to flesh out the characters and give them a reason for what they do. And give us a reason to care about them.
After sleepwalking its way through the final confrontation Super Hot does deliver one real scare, the threat of a sequel. We can only hope Taylor King takes a course in screenwriting and motivating actors before he shoots it.
Super Hot is available to stream. You may be able to find out more at the production company’s website.
I enjoyed the movie and found it to be creative and comical. I hope to see the sequel!! I give it 4 stars!
While I agree with the assessment regarding the writing as well as the vampires not really feeling “scary” (not sure if they were supposed to) I disagree with Kandace Kale’s performance. That was her character, a sort of nerdy “clerks like” underachiever who was just getting by. Her performance was fine.
It was the writing and the directing that needed more work.