Brightburn director's scrappy debut film is flawed but brilliant

Brightburn is one of this year's big budget horror releases – a scary movie reimagining of the Superman story produced by James Gunn. Yet its director cut his teeth on micro-budget 2014 gore-fest The Hive, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime.

Director David Yarovesky's debut feature caught Gunn's attention and won him the bug bucks funding he needed to make Brightburn. It's a film that has largely flown under the radar, but what was it that caught Hollywood's attention?

The Hive is in some ways a typical story of plague and infestation. A group of camp counsellors slowly succumb to nasty black goo which makes them violent, telepathic and pretty unsightly.

The Hive is messy, but unlike many horror films it's certain of its own right to exist in a busy genre landscape

Our hero Adam (Gabriel Basso) wakes up infected by the goo and suffering from amnesia. There are warnings scrawled on the wall that there are monsters outside, and Adam starts to realise that not all of the memories he's slowly recovering are his own.

It's clichéd and is burdened with inconsistent characterisation and dodgy CGI. The goo demons play ridiculous mind games with our heroes in silly voices, and are (we learn) the result of B Movie communist experiments.

The thing is, The Hive is also fantastic. More so than more traditionally 'well-made' horror movies, I found myself tensing up as the characters succumbed to the goo. Some of the set pieces were inspired – as genuinely scary as last year's foreign language hit Terrified. 

It's hard to put your finger on what it is about The Hive that works so well, despite its often misfiring plot and lightly sketched characters.

The most obvious answer is that it's a movie made with passion by people with a story to tell. It's messy, but unlike many horror films it's certain of its own right to exist in a busy genre landscape.

While movies like Hereditary and The Witch are near-perfect, glacial experiences full of shivery dread and minute attention to detail, The Hive feels like taking a tumble into a racing and agitated mind.

Its jumpy editing and spotty interlaced narratives – along with the sense that aspects of the movie weren't entirely thought through – somehow become part of its appeal.

Intense but imperfect horror films made by people who care about them still lodge themselves in our brains. They exist on a visceral level beyond the usual markers of what makes a good film.

The Hive pushes Adam to such an extreme place that we forget that his only personality trait seems to be that he likes to have a lot of sex and can be a bit of an oaf. The central romance with Katie is goofy and sentimental, but somehow I found myself invested in it.

The Hive reminded me of Replace, another low budget, largely unknown movie which was gorgeous to look at but had an utterly bananas plot that barely made sense.

That movie was very much not one of the higher quality horror films I've seen. Yet somehow I can't seem to forget it.

The Hive is also a film I won't be forgetting in a hurry. It's very hard to single out one thing that makes it so good. Its icky body horror, scattergun plot and hysterical tone are all strangely compelling.

In the end The Hive fizzles out within the last ten minutes, bungling its final few plot points and falling well short of the resolution we deserve.

Yet it makes me excited for Brightburn. True, a larger budget and the influence of studio bigwigs may suffocate the early promise Yarovesky shows as a director. But if Brightburn is anywhere near as good as The Hive is at its best, then it promises to be one of 2019's most memorable horror movies.

While The Hive's Katie and Adam are pretty cute together, most horror movie couples should probably have relationship counselling. Here's the ten most toxic romances in horror.

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