Habitual

Would you watch a movie filmed in an abandoned mental hospital? The producers of Habitual, a new horror film from Charlestown, Mass. native Johnny Hickey (Oxy-Morons), are betting that your answer is a resounding yes.

In the film’s (very) busy first fifteen minutes, we are introduced to a single father (Chris Tamburello of The Real World fame) waging war against the local drug scene; a group of townies looking for their next designer drug fix; a troubled patient on the verge of escaping from a mental asylum; and a dark history surrounding that same hospital. As these threads connect, Habitual lets two parallel narratives unfold: in one, a deranged killer known only as The Blight picks off the partygoers one-by-one, and in the other, these same characters are made to realize that the world around them is less real than it seems.

If all of this seems like a lot for a low-budget horror film, well, you’re not wrong. There are good ideas present in Habitual, but the film’s unwillingness to pick a lane keeps holding it back. It’s easy to ding a film like this for its non-professional actors – although someday, Boston’s answer to the Safdie Brothers will turn Tamburello into a townie icon – but those rough edges are to be expected for a horror film of this caliber. Hickey’s inability to balance his narrative between a no-budget slasher and a purgatorial thriller is what keeps the film from ever getting off the ground. The Blight could work as a creature that exists between life and death, but swapping the horrific elegance of plague doctors for Blockbuster Exclusive-caliber gore prevents Hickey from delivering on the film’s true potential.

Which is a shame, because Habitual does deliver on its promise of an unnerving location shoot. There are moments in the film where the illusion of cinema breaks, and you worry as to the OSHA compliance of the production. Characters scramble their way up collapsing stairwells or along dissolving walls, leaving clouds of dust and wallpaper in their wake. The result is a film that wears its DIY attitude on its sleeve and never lets you forget the risks being taken by the cast and crew. Massachusetts’ Westborough State Hospital is the unquestioned star of the show, and Hickey and company are smart enough to get out of the building’s way whenever and wherever possible.

There is a certain audience of horror fans who will be delighted by the combination of no-budget gore and production design Habitual has to offer. These fans – who cut their teeth on video nasties and often love a horror movie as much for its tenacity as its quality – will undoubtedly find inspiration in Hickey’s work. But for the rest of us, Habitual is destined to peak as the answer to a piece of Halloween trivia (“What horror films were shot in abandoned mental hospitals?”). Even in a quiet year for mainstream releases, this one is probably worth skipping for all but the most die-hard genre fans.

Habitual is available on VOD now.