HISS (2011) Movie Review

One simple word to describe Hisss: Frustrating. Why? Well, Writer/Director Jennifer Lynch stated a while back that the film was taken out of her hands after she turned in her first cut of the picture. The film was ‘too European’ and not scary enough in the minds of the producers and so the film was recut to be more of a horror film. And in that reedit, lies the frustration. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

Hisss tells the story of Vinkram Gupta; an Indian police detective investigating a series of strange murders around his city. He finds out that it’s the work of a Nagin, a snake woman, whose come to the city to track down her stolen lover.

I was certainly intrigued and got very excited when I first heard about the film. It was unique in the respect that it explores a culture that I don’t know a lot about and introduces an audience to an interesting myth from that culture. And I’m all for introducing new things into the storyline.

What’s obvious is that Lynch’s statements of the film being taken away from her are quite accurate. The film that exists now has been sliced, flash framed, faded-to-black, jump cut…. basically every kind of quick editing trick in the book to try and elicit some sense of tension and horror has been enacted upon this film.

What’s obvious is that Lynch tried to craft a film blending Bollywood sensibilities and European fantastique/surreal romance-horror. I don’t think I’m reaching in saying that Hisss, if Lynch had been able to execute her vision, would have certainly appealed to fans of Jean Rollin.

From that very specific genre background, it’s fairly easy to feel the editing as the editor (or whoever did the recut) desperately tried to cut what was certainly not a straight horror film into a straight horror film.

As one of my Professors would say “you don’t have the rushes for it.” If you don’t have the rushes for a horror film, try as you might you’re never going to get a horror film out of it. And that’s a big problem with Hisss, it’s frustrating as this is a film that obviously isn’t meant to be a horror film but someone is trying to force it to become one. Like trying to force a triangle block into the circle one.

The film jumps all over the place because of this, scenes of genuine humor and character development are cut off short. Scenes that were seemingly meant to be disturbing and creepy rather than scary are hacked to ribbons to the point of being almost unwatchable. Even what I’m sure was suppose to be a big dance number at the start of the film feels cut down to barely a few seconds.

When watching films with troubled production history, sometimes is almost impossible to notice. Other times, more often than not, it’s as plain as day. Hisss falls into the latter category; I felt like if the scenes that felt un-tampered with were allowed to continue it’d be better. That there was and is a better film underneath it all.

But enough with the bad, at the moment, where is the good? Sadly, what good there is is hard to get to with all the editing problems.

Well first shooting in India certainly helped. It’s absolutely gorgeous. You couldn’t replicate real India like that on a back-lot.

Performances, when the editing isn’t distracting from it, are fairly solid. Two good mentions are the leads. Irran Khan (playing Gupta) is a good leading man and certainly has a good every man quality about him. He sells the emotional scenes when he’s at home with his wife and the exhausted detective material when he’s out on the job.

Mallika Sherawat plays the Nagin and beyond looking absolutely stunning; she gives a wonderful physical performance. Conveying the confusion of her new human form and learning human customs, to pain, anger, and sadness all without saying a word.

I love creature movies and I’ve never seen any film with Nagin or Snake Women as leads so this really intrigued me. Not only from seeing a cool creature, but unlike other creature films where you don’t feel for it; here you do. You side with the Nagin, she has been wronged and while people might view her as a monster or creature; her actions, while brutal, are understandable.

Robert Kurtzman (formally one third of KNB) created the Nagin effects and coming from the ‘80s high times of practical makeup effects. They are very solid and look absolutely amazing. The only downside of the practical is that they’re very hard to see at times, once again, to very bad reedits. The only other downside is the male Nagin snake looks…well…like a fake rubber snake.

The other big negative is the CG, wow. Very, very, very bad CGI; certainly some of the worst I’ve seen in a low budget film in a long time. I’m sure you can chalk it up to the production problems; but it might have been easier to stomach if it weren’t for the fact the CG is the stuff the editing lingers on.

And on a final negative note: the music and sound. It honestly doesn’t sound like anyone really scored the film beyond a few, repeated guitar rifts. The rest of the music I’m sure I’ve heard in other films, TV shows, commercials and games. It truly sounds like someone had only an hour to raid Soundminer and grabbed whatever they could. Once again, I’m sure that the current score wasn’t in Lynch’s idea.

Yeah, that was Hisss; a piece of frustrating cinema because of reedits. It’s one of those movies that you can watch and see a potentially interesting and far superior film just under the surface. But, until Lynch gets a chance like Del Toro did when he was able to go back and reedit Mimic; this is the version we’re stuck with.

And it’s a big piece of frustration. Curiosity seekers may wish to check it out; but otherwise, as it is, it’s really not worth it. If however Lynch does get a chance to reedit and score the film, certainly count me in to check it out.