Owning a home is hell, especially when dealing with your HOA. In William Bagley’s Hold the Fort, which just had its world premiere last night at the Fantastia International Film Festival, it takes that motif literally. This charming indie horror movie hits the ground running and doesn’t make the audience wait for its bazaar of creatures to make themselves known. With a sharp wit at its disposal and some gags that you’ve definitely never seen before, Hold the Fort is on its way to becoming a new favorite for genre fans, even if it sometimes seems to exist just for the gags.
In the film, married couple Lucas and Jenny (Chris Mayers and Haley Leary, respectively) are finally homeowners. Having just moved into their new neighborhood, they’re quickly confronted with a surprise Lucas was hiding: they’re bound by a Home Owners Association. One might immediately assume that this group will become the origin of the evil at the heart of the movie, but that’s just the first of many twists to be found in Hold the Fort. Instead, the pair make their way to an annual party held by the HOA where the theme isn’t fun in the sun or neighborly greetings, instead, it’s staying alive after a nearby portal to Hell begins its annual opening. They even have a banner inside that reads: “Welcome to the Equinox, please don’t die.”
Bagley’s script plays fast and loose with the “how” and “why” of it all, brushing aside any questions with a quick exposition reply that at least tracks, if it doesn’t fully make sense. Fans eager for the carnage will welcome this as it means getting to that quicker (and at a lean 74 minutes with credits, the wait for a bloodbath isn’t long), but that does mean narratively it’s squeezing a lot into a little bit of time. The briskness of that pace results in a lot happening quickly, including most of the cast being taken off the board in a variety of memorable ways.
Mayers and Leary as the leads carry most of the film, but they’re flanked by some characters that fulfill Hold the Fort‘s promise of being fun. Hamid-Reza Benjamin Thompson appears as the secret weapon of Hold the Fort, literally and metaphorically, the gun-toting McScruffy. Hired by the HOA to protect them every year against whatever comes out of the Hell portal, Thompson makes this character compelling by honing in on the aspects of a gritty action character that would make them tiresome and instead turns those qualities into the groundwork for comedy.
Perhaps the best performance in Hold the Fort, though, is Julian Smith as Jerry, the HOA president. Early in the film, he accidently consumes one too many muscle relaxers and, as a result, spends the rest of the film like a limp doll forced to shout instructions from wherever his body has been placed or thrown. This is one of the film’s best recurring gags; Smith exudes a grounded confidence in what is clearly a very physical performance despite no movement on his part.
Hold the Fort may not have a Goosebumps-amount of monsters at its disposal, but the ones that are present are at least as fun as they are familiar. Considering the larger premise of the movie lends itself to being like Assault on Precinct 13 meets The Cabin in the Woods, the beasts that do appear are all memorable. Witches, a werewolf, kung-fu ghosts, and more appear in the film, and though their scenes are largely fleeting, they all leave a mark. Bagley’s script and direction find ways to put all these monsters on their head and bring something to the table that fans are never expecting.
Genre fans with a proclivity for the likes of late-night surprise releases from Adult Swim will almost certainly find a kindred spirit in Hold the Fort. This, of course, does include the pratfalls of a lower budget, but anyone who can buy the ticket and take the ride may be willing to overlook the seams of independent filmmaking. At its core, Hold the Fort is pure and simple a good time, especially for monster fans, and it’s something that could easily become a Halloween favorite thanks to its creatures and irreverent nature.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Hold the Fort does not yet have a release date.
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