Spontaneous (2020)

Smith’s Verdict: ***1/2

Reviewed by Tanner Smith

It’s just a normal day at school until something totally unexpected and truly terrifying happens when a student suddenly dies. No, it’s not a school shooting, though one parent admits to fearing that was the case upon hearing of the tragedy. Instead, it’s…spontaneous combustion.

That’s right–a high-school senior just suddenly explodes like a balloon filled with blood, sending the whole town in a panic. No one knows why it happened or even if it will happen again. But things get even scarier when it does happen again…a lot. More of the upperclassmen at Covington High School are randomly exploding without rhyme or reason. The crowd is celebrating a high-school football game–one of the players goes kaboom! Our young protagonist enjoys a nice drive with friends and then suddenly…well, you get the idea.

That’s the setup for Brian Duffield’s “Spontaneous,” a terrific dark comedy with plenty of surprises in its cynical humor and (I’m not kidding here) its smart insight in how modern-day teenagers react to tragedy around themselves. As funny as this film is (and it’s very funny at times), it’s also quite moving and sincere when it needs to be.

After the first tragic combustion, a kind boy named Dylan (Charlie Plummer) sees this as a sign to live life to the fullest, which not only includes buying his own car (or in this case, his own milk truck–how random) but also revealing his true feelings to his crush from afar. That would be Mara (Katherine Langford), the film’s sassy, sarcastic narrator who doesn’t take everything seriously, let alone her own future. Not even the explosions of her own classmates seem to faze her all that much–she and her bestie Tess (Hayley Law) can only comment on how weird it all is.

Anyway, after Dylan starts up conversation with Mara (by sending “Dick” pics of Richard Nixon–“Sorry if it’s crooked,” texts Dylan), they start hanging out together and connecting like they wouldn’t have before. Thus starts a relationship that continues even when the rest of their class is in quarantine while the government tries to come up with some kind of cure to prevent further kids from blowing up.

After that, well…I’ll leave that for you to discover. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this film, which is not only very funny in a dark, cynical way (the way that Duffield, the writer of the Netflix bloody gem “The Babysitter,” could deliver–and this is his directorial debut)…but it’s also very insightful and pretty moving, again, when it needs to be. When you think about these kids who think nothing bad can happen to them and their whole lives are ahead of them and then suddenly this unexplained epidemic comes along, think of how much anxiety and fear comes from such a wakeup call.

(Note: It’s amazing that this film came out when it did, considering it was made two years before the COVID-19 global pandemic. You can make many parallels to it, strangely.)

Mara goes through the stages of it all–jokes about the situation, then denial, depression, lashing out irrationally, everything–and it’s an intriguing, compelling character growth that comes out of it. All I’ll say about the ending is that I think it’s perfect for this material. It’d be somewhat preachy if it weren’t so damn funny.

What helps elevate this film from typical “cult movie” status, which I think it’s destined to become*, is the interesting relationships that many characters have with each other. Mara and Dylan are cute, funny, and lovely together and they complement each other perfectly. Mara and Tess are a wonderful duo of best friends (the best “best-friendship” I’ve seen in a long time), as their witty banter develops into something more as the film progresses and they fear one or the other might explode. And Mara also has a nice relationship with her parents (played very well by Piper Perabo and Rob Huebel)–funny, loving, obviously concerned, and even going as far as to allow their daughter to do drugs with them. (They know she’s not good at hiding her marijuana.)

“Spontaneous” could have just been your typical cynical dark comedy just to provoke a shocked response from the audience–it’s more than that. By the end of the film, I’ve laughed, my heart leapt for these characters, I bought the romance, and I believed in what the film got across in the end. This is an ambitious dark comedy that pays off in a superb way.

*There are already plenty of reviews for “Spontaneous” that reference an obvious comparison: the ’80s cult dark teen comedy “Heathers” once or twice. I personally feel like this film is more mature, but don’t quote me on that.