Art of a Hit
Directed by Gaelan Connell
Written by Gaelan Connell, Charlie Saxton
Starring: Ryan Donowho, Charlie Saxton, Tim Jo, Rob Raco
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour 33 minutes
On VOD/Digital August 20

by Jill Vranken, Staff Writer

Art of a Hit is billed as a rock n’ roll horror movie, boosting a killer soundtrack by indie rock band Jets to Brazil. The movie grapples with a question that looms large over the life of an artist: what would you give to stay famous? At the start of the film, we meet the rock band Excelsior just as they’re about to go on stage for what will be their breakthrough performance. As the band’s leading men, Miles (Rob Raco) and Ryan (Ryan Donowho), shake hands, Ryan has a brief and terrifying vision of his band mate’s warped, bloody face.

Cut to eight years later. The band–minus Miles, who went solo some years prior–are in a van driving through the Dordogne in France. They are on their way to a one-thousand year old French chateau, where they will meet with an elusive super-producer named Charlie (Charlie Saxton) to hopefully record their big comeback single. But past grievances flare up quickly. As tensions rise in the chateau, the pressure to succeed threatens to get the better of them, and Ryan’s grasp on reality starts to blur.

As a horror fan, I was intrigued by how the movie would pull off that “rock n’ roll horror” promise; I am always here for new ways of storytelling within the genre. While Art of a Hit didn’t quite turn out to be the movie I thought it would be, I still found it intriguing for the way it teases out the psychology of this specific situation.

The film starts off at the 1996 Video Music Awards, with Excelsior at the start of their career. The opening is shot in one fluent motion, following Ryan as he and his band mates get ready to go on stage. Aside from Ryan and Miles, we have drummer Cristin (Allie MacDonald), keyboard player Mat (James Earl) and guitarist Timmy (Tim Jo), all primed and ready for the moment which will change their lives. When we meet them again, eight years on and one member down, Ryan is keen to make the best of this one last chance. They’ve been joined by another guitarist, David (David Valdes), who is the reason they’re in a van in rural France–he is the one who suggested working with super-producer Charlie, having read his book (titled Art of a Hit, just in case you wondered where the movie gets its title from).

While we do get to hang out with the band, we don’t get much in the way of characterization. Mat is lovelorn, Cristin is a longtime friend of Ryan, Timmy is the one who’s found some success–but working for other bands–and David is the new, eager kid who has quite literally Read The Book. Still, there is a basic sense of the dynamic: everyone has reunited at Ryan’s behest, and it is Ryan for whom this means the most.

Donowho does a good job as Ryan, a man whose eyes permanently look tired and who only seems to relax when he’s performing. Watching his state of mind deteriorate to the point of hallucination, the castle becomes the ground for his nightmares, the constant shadows of the chances he never took coming back to haunt him. Saxton is very fun as Charlie, a deeply weird little man who in his spare time forges weapons for no other reason than he’s rich enough to have a workshop in his backyard (you know, the backyard of his castle). While you also do not get much backstory on Charlie, it is quite fun to imagine one (I like to think he’s a music industry nepo baby; your mileage may vary), and it’s not hard to think of him as an amalgamation of several music industry bigwigs.

Cinematographer Joe Simon does sterling work showing off the beauty of the Dordogne, all blue skies and crisp foliage. There are also some stellar night shots–a standout sequence involves a game of Dare or Dare, in which Ryan is dared to go into the castle’s pigeonnier (or Pigeon Ray, as Mat refers to it) while filming with Mat’s digital camera, which he is carrying around for the purpose of filming a vlog (only the film is mainly set in 2004 so the word doesn’t really exist yet, and Mat refers to it as a “vajournal.” Mat is kind of fun). We see this sequence play out through the digital camera, and it’s the film’s most effective horror sequence, evoking the spirit of a mid-aughts handheld horror flick.

Surprisingly, the film doesn’t go where you expect it to go–instead opting to focus on the horror of Ryan’s increasingly desperate attempts to keep Excelsior’s comeback on the rails, even as the lines of his reality blur. The horror then becomes that of the mind as a haunted house: Ryan is a man constantly fighting against the spectre of irrelevance and the ghosts of the band’s past. Visions of Miles keep coming to him, and it is clear that there is both a deep envy for Miles’s ongoing success and an even deeper resentment for him leaving.

Art of a Hit doesn’t quite stick the landing–as I mentioned, there is a lack of development for characters who are not Ryan, which affects the flow of the movie. But what it does do well is give us an insight into the struggles of trying to make it in a cutthroat business, and what happens when the music stops.