At its best, Spring is a hypnotic and unique genre fusion: a dreamily romantic creature feature. The storyline begins with the death of protagonist Evan's (Lou Taylor Pucci) mother. After years of caring for her, he is adrift: despondent, unsatisfied with his job in a bar, and pursued by the police after a fight. He escapes to Italy, and a popular cinematic male fantasy begins to play out: he finds an idyllic job on a farm with a wisdom-dispensing old man (Francesco Carnelutti) and falls in love with Louise (Nadia Hilker), an Italian student as beautiful as she is enigmatic. However, the audience realizes long before Evan there is more to Louise than meets the eye: she gives herself injections to halt transformations into a bloodthirsty and grotesque creature. The film sidesteps genre conventions by continuing to respect both characters and their bond; it elicits fear and sympathy for both him (will he become her victim?) and her (can she overcome the beast within?). Unfortunately, the tantalizing blend of youthful romance and body horror becomes less interesting as the film becomes less coy. Its early and playful focus on atmosphere and suspense gives way to overly verbose explanation and greeting-card sentimentality. Also, though they excel at composing lushly Gothic widescreen images, writing-directing duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are nowhere near as adept as writers. There is often a distracting, Kevin Smith-lite vulgarity to the dialogue, and soul-baring lines intended as earnest and poignant can instead be groan-inducing.

C+

Really trying to decide if this would be a good blind buy. Does anyone with a good idea of my taste think I'd like this? It's only $9.99 on Blu-ray at Best Buy and reviews are pretty great.

You should enjoy it.

I'm not even into to these type of romance/horror films, but I did enjoy this. The leads have some great chemistry and I loved the Lovecraftian vibe it was going for.

You'll like it.

This movie actually marks the first time that I have been quoted on the German DVD/BluRay cover, so yay! My website has been quoted before, but those were not reviews written by me.

It's a very disjointed movie. Feels like a couple of movies cannibalized for certain plot elements and all put together. That bothered me the most. I think that the beginning is especially in too big of a contrast compared to the rest of the movie. Sure, it provides an excuse for why he had to go to Europe, but I feel like a couple of sentences while he chatted with a girl would have provided more than enough of a backstory why he's travelling in Europe. But once it gets to the fantastical romantic drama the movie gets a nice flow.

Though once he figures out the girl is a bit of a creature I felt bothered by the need for her to explain everything. It was like the rest of the movie was just her telling her story. It was a bit boring way to tell the story.

**1/2 / ***** (C-)