[Film Review] We Might Hurt Each Other (2022)

The Lithuanian slasher film We Might Hurt Each Other (also known as Pensive) deftly combines folklore, horror and the navigation of a high school social system to create a thrilling and thought-provoking movie. The film (now streaming on SCREAMBOX) was directed by Jonas Trukanas and written by Titas Laucius and Trukanas. It sets itself apart from other slashers by building the tension and growing the relationships between the characters, so that when the first bloody act takes place, it's all the more disturbing.

Šarūnas Rapolas Meliešius stars as Marius, who seems to float through his high school experience without making much of an impression on anyone, except his best friend Vytas (Povilas Jatkevičius). While Vytas encourages Marius to let loose and take chances, Marius's parents urge him to be sensible and cautious. His mother is a no-nonsense businesswoman who pays the least amount of attention possible to Marius; his father's admiration for Marius's classmate Rimas (Kipras Mašidlauskas), a tall, handsome, NBA-bound popular student, overshadows any affection he has for his own son.

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As Rimas's epic plans for their class's graduation party fall through, Marius happens to overhear his mother on the phone, trying to convince one of her clients to buy a cottage in the country, even as she acknowledges the cottage's unfortunate history. Hearing about the empty property, Marius seizes on the opportunity to impress his classmates – especially Rimas's girlfriend Brigita (Gabija Bargailaité) – and decides to throw the party in the abandoned cottage.

Once the teens arrive, Saulé (Saulé Emilija Rašimaité), one of the quieter girls in the class, immediately realizes that they're staying in the home of Algis Motiejūnas. She reveals to her classmates that Motiejūnas was the sole survivor of a fire that took the lives of his family. After his family members died, Saulé said Motiejūnas "started carving really strange sculptures."

Wood carving is a part of Lithuanian folk art; carvings are often made of Jesus or saints, or other figures that are symbolic in the country's folklore. Because so much of the country was covered in forest, wood became an important part of Lithuania's folk art. In this case, the carvings Motiejūnas created appear to be people suffering – perhaps people burning to death in a fire. As Saulé says, "He embodied the suffering of the nation and the individual." In this case, his statues might also embody his family members.

With the pounding beat of rave music as the background of their debauchery (reminiscent of Gasper Noé's 2018 French horror film Climax), the kids begin partying, imbibing drugs and alcohol, making out, and exploring new romances. Vytas and Saulé are a particularly engaging couple that form. As their dalliance begins, they both wander around the mysterious carvings in the dark. Vytas asks Saulé, "Why don't they have eyes?" to which she replies, "There's probably something they shouldn't see."

And she seems to be right. As the teens get wilder, they begin destroying the wooden statues – Rimas chops off a statue's head, while other classmates burn the statues, and in a particularly freaky moment, one of the students sticks his freshly made kebabs into a statue. Very quickly, the teens begin facing the consequences of their actions in a particularly bloody way, as they're stalked by a mask-wearing madman. When the gory murders begin, the music shifts from blaring techno to the more eerie sounds of Andrius Kauklys, calling to mind some the Goblin music from Dario Argento's Italian horror classic Suspiria.

We Might Hurt Each other spends the first half of the film setting up the social dynamics of the group. It does an especially good job of fleshing out Rimas, who is perfectly played by Kipras Mašidlauskas. As the film positions Marius as the lead, Rimas is seen as the Brom Bones to Marius's Ichabod Crane. As their Katrina Van Tassel, Gabija Bargailaité's Brigita is luminous as the most popular girl in their class. But as the film continues into the second one, the viewer is forced to wonder just how far Marius will go to have his chance with Brigita. 

Other standout performances in the film include Martynas Berulis, who plays Žygis, a star student who shows up drunk and shirtless to the party and takes a large quantity of drugs. While he's the only one who doesn't take the attacks seriously in his altered state, he's also a bit of a Cassandra; he knows what the future holds, but no one believes him. Berulis's live-wire depiction of this unusual character adds another level of intrigue to We Might Hurt Each Other.

As the body count grows, the viewer's perception of every character shifts – from the insightful Saulé to the cool guy Vytas to the superstar Rimas, and of course, the deceptively average Marius. At the beginning of the film, the school principal tells her students, "Be the hunters, not the prey," during their graduation ceremony, and by the end of the film, viewers find out who listened to her oddly prescient advice. 

We Might Hurt Each Other is now streaming on SCREAMBOX.

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