Spirit Tasting Review: Chris LaMartinas Latest is Horror Love Drunk
Baltimore! Just had to get that out of the way, since Spirit Tasting, Chris LaMartina’s latest feature (and the first Terror Vision Original Production), is having its World Premiere at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland, tonight. I grew up near Baltimore, and there’s just something special to me about filmmakers like LaMartina (or Albert Birney of Obex) paying homage to their hometowns.
It helps that Spirit Tasting, like LaMartina’s WNUF Halloween Special, is positively brimming with indie, “post-punk” charm. It’s the special kind of horror movie imbued with the innate passion and enthusiasm its creative team has for the genre, and that heart and soul helps navigate the expected budgetary constraints (the film was shot in just four days for a meager $40,000).
Sean Doherty, Melissa LaMartina, and Trevor Wilhelms are old friends reconnecting on New Year’s Eve at their favorite former dive bar, now a distillery, to honor their late friend, sibling, and bandmate a year after his passing. They’re not in a particularly great spot to start, grappling with employment woes, grief, and that ever-elusive sense that the best of their days are behind them. Even before the spirits are poured, the pathos cut deep.
Alongside bartender Grace (Tatiana Nya Ford) and two other patrons, the trio of friends opt into an exclusive “spirit tasting” to turn the night around and give them all something worth remembering. That tasting (because this is a horror movie) has unexpected consequences, principally of the ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ variety. Co-writer Michael Varrati (you know who he is) riffs on the familiar unexpected consequence angle of W.W. Jacobs’ original short story, twisting the group’s innocuous, end-of-year wishes into devious, often gruesome, tableaux of carnage.
Will (Doherty), for instance, wishes for a promotion he’d just been passed over for. Moments later, he gets a call from his douche of a boss. Weird, the candidate they offered the role to just died, so the promotion is Will’s if he wants it. Comparatively, Will gets off easy. Running just over 70 minutes, Spirit Tasting, apropos of its title, is a sampler, if not exactly a full meal.
The aforementioned carnage is largely reserved for the final reels, though LaMartina and Special FX artists Jessie Seitz and Marcus Koch get pretty creative, including with a practical, must-see trip to the bathroom that ends in the weirdest (and also weirdly adorable) way possible. It’s cute, it’s light, and it’s a helluva lot of fun. Of course, that fun is contingent on just how much you vibe with LaMartina and his troupe of friends. Given the budgetary constraints, the vibe is largely hang-out.
For me, it took me right back to Baltimore. The 2013, 2014 era. A time when my friends and I would hit up Rams Head for a Jimmy Eat World concert before pivoting to a guerrilla production of Evil Dead: The Musical deep in the woods. A bunch of punks who loved horror, immersing themselves in it at every and any possible turn. The love for genre runs deep with the crew here, and better still, there’s a remarkable twist on a familiar tale at its core. It’s vibes, yes, but it’s also solid filmmaking that belies its origins.
Spirit Tasting promises a buzz, but by the end, you’ll be drunk on the sheer heart of it all.
Spirit Tasting world premieres in Baltimore, MD on November 12th before starting out on a riotous roadshow across the United States that will run through the beginning of the New Year.
You can order a copy of the Terror Vision Blu-Ray here.
Summary
Spirit Tasting promises a buzz, but by the end, you’ll be drunk on the sheer heart of it all.
