My love of music is one of the few things that can keep up with my love of horror, so it should come as no surprise that The art of a hit caught my attention when I heard about it. It’s a horror film about a fictional 90’s rock band, and as a huge fan of 90’s alternative rock, I felt like it was made just for me. I just had to watch this film as soon as possible, and when I finally got my screener copy, I pressed play with the joyful anticipation of a child on Christmas morning.
The art of a hit The 40 Years of Love was directed and co-written by Gaelan Draper and stars Ryan Donowho, Charlie Saxton, Tim Jo, Rob Raco, James Earl, Allie MacDonald and David Valdes. In the film, Ryan is the lead singer of Excelsis, a band that rose to fame in the ’90s and then quickly faded into obscurity. Now, nearly a decade later, he wants to recapture his glory days, so he gets the band back together and tries to record a new album.
The old friends travel to a millennia-old French castle to work with an eccentric super-producer named Charlie, but unfortunately their comeback attempt doesn’t go as planned. It looks like Excelsis will never reach the top of the charts again, and worse, Ryan begins experiencing some strange, possibly supernatural phenomena. Is it just the stress of making a great album, or is there really something haunting this old castle?
I have to be honest, I have very mixed feelings about The art of a hit. There are some elements of the film that touch me deeply, but the overall experience leaves a lot to be desired. Let’s start with the positive. From the beginning, I had a great time with each and every one of these characters.
The acting is fantastic throughout, so I had no problem believing that these really are old friends getting back together to do what they love. There’s also a newcomer to the group, and the personality differences between him and his bandmates have a strange, quirky charm.
But undoubtedly the best characters in The art of a hit are Ryan and Charlie. Ryan is played brilliantly by Ryan Donowho and everything about the guy, from his gestures to his facial expressions, lets you know how much this potential comeback means to him. His insignificance over the past few years really haunts him and there’s no doubt he’ll do anything to get back into the spotlight.
I’m a musician myself, so I saw a lot of myself in this character. Admittedly, I never really dreamed of being a famous rock star, but I know what it’s like to desperately want people to like your music. It can be like a disease that eats you away from the inside, and Ryan Donowho plays the role flawlessly.
In contrast, Charlie is as arrogant and confident as can be. He doesn’t play or write music himself, but his success has definitely gone to his head. The guy is a self-proclaimed guru who seems to think he is above the musicians he works with, and actor Charlie Saxton is perfect in the role. He makes you want to punch the guy in the face every time he opens his mouth, and as The art of a hit goes on, he doesn’t lose a step.
These great characters make for a fascinating story, but unfortunately the horror in this story doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain. To be fair, there are some scenes where director Gaelan Draper turns the scare factor up to 11, and they’re super fun, but they often lead to a very disappointing climax. The film has a lot of dream sequences and fake jump scares, and as any seasoned genre veteran knows, that’s never a recipe for success.
And even if The art of a hit is going for real scares, many of them are very generic. The best thing I can say about most of these scenes is that some of the gore effects are pretty good, but they’re not the main attraction here. This film is primarily a scarefest, not a bloodbath, so the heavy effects can’t overcome the “been there before” vibe that many of the scares give off.
Finally, the film also contains a number of creepy elements that ultimately lead nowhere. To give just one example, there is a room that the band members are told to stay away from, and when one of them inevitably checks it out anyway, we learn that there is a mysterious box inside that functions as a sensory deprivation chamber.
It seems to be a grim premonition of what is to come, but The art of a hit doesn’t do anything interesting with it. At best, the role it plays in the third act might be a metaphor for Ryan’s ultimate fate, but from me it elicited nothing more than a yawn and a bored shrug.
In the end, I have to say that I would not recommend it The art of a hit. Sure, the characters are fun, and if you’re a musician you’ll certainly sympathize with Ryan’s struggles, but unfortunately the weak horror just drags the film down too much. It turns what could have been a great allegory about the horrors of being an artist into a bland, often formulaic exercise in genre cliches. So if you’re looking for something good to watch, I suggest you look elsewhere.
The art of a hit is scheduled to be released on VOD on August 20th.
