On average, the type of person who would run an HOA shares a profile similar to that of the person who would run a for-profit prison. In their calculus, you, a homeowner in their community, are but a cog in a tidy homogeneous machine; whatever rules they see fit to impose on residents must be followed, however arbitrary.
No backing into parking spots. No vegetable gardens. No pink flamingos (the lawn ornaments, not John Waters’ 1972 masterpiece, though frankly your average HOA board member probably would ban that film from all homes in their association if they could). No white lights except during the holiday season. No bird feeders without a permit. Basically, and put succinctly: no.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, though, and even batshit HOA ordinances have their logic and value, such as: bring your own ammo to the community clubhouse on the Equinox, the night of the year when the mystery hell portal on the premises opens and unleashes wave after wave of random assorted monsters on the neighborhood.
Running a residential community isn’t cheap, especially communities in which an annual firefight takes place between the folks living in it and a relentless nightmare army. Have you seen the price of silver these days?
William Bagley presents these questions–silly, fantastical ones–alongside larger, less silly ones at the heart of his new film, Hold the Fort. In this scenario, slugging it out with witches and werewolves on the same night every calendar year is a small price to pay for domestic bliss the rest of the year.
Congenial effete doofus Lucas (Chris Mayers) and his grunge-coded fiancée Jenny (Haley Leary) have just moved to Gruber Hills, an idyllic little enclave where mortgages are low and nobody pays property tax, on account of that whole aforementioned hell portal deal.
For reasons the film wisely doesn’t bother unpacking, Gruber Hills is the site of a dimensional hole in the earth that spews forth a smorgasbord of your favorite horror story boogeymen; and for reasons the film doesn’t need to unpack, because this is America, HOA president Jerry (Julian Smith) convinced the U.S. government to let the community stand, on the condition that the portal is their problem to handle and theirs alone.
This is all news to Lucas and, most of all, to Jenny, who have a minor squabble as Hold the Fort opens about the fact of the HOA at all. Lucas didn’t tell Jenny about the HOA, it seems, the sort of thing that tends to end a man up in the doghouse (though at no point is it clarified whether Gruber Hills allows doghouses in the first place).
That would be a big enough white lie without the nearly immediate confrontation with the terrors of the pit the couple suffer in the film’s slim (74-minute) run time. Had Lucas actually read the contract, he’d have known about the portal, the teeming and varied creepy crawlies, and McScruffy (Hamid-Reza Benjamin Thompson), Jerry’s hired muscle, who we’re told typically manages the event just about singlehandedly.
Hold the Fort has a hoot and several hollers with its basic conceit, as if there’s any other way to approach this kind of material. In an alternate universe, there may be a stuffier, didactic version of this movie that rubs the theme of home ownership in the audience’s faces: it’s not just a spook-a-blast flick, actually; it’s about America.
On the other hand, though we might as well have fun while Bagley and his cast are having fun, there’s a lot to be said about the lengths people will go to, and what people are willing to tolerate, to secure domestic stability in an historically hostile (read: broadly unaffordable) housing market for first-time buyers.
Literally everything and then some costs more now than it did several months ago, and several months ago, everything and then some cost more then than it did several months prior to that. Given that, emptying a full clip at a bunch of kamikaze vampire bats in exchange for a minuscule cost of living seems pretty sweet.
Bagley, of course, invests in cheesy B-movie horror-comedy experiential pleasures, borrowing notes from the playbooks of such titans as Sam Raimi, Stuart Gordon, and Fred Dekker, whose collective filmographies suggest meaningful influence on Hold the Fort’s tongue-in-cheek self-awareness.
Happily, there’s no winking and nudging here, nor even a trace amount of meta-referentialism. The film is a labor of authentic, humble fandom, with genuine love for the kinds of movies evoked through the use of practical effects and splattered guts as punchlines.
Even the goofy one-liners here make perfect sense as the product of a microculture that eschews bad language at all times other than go time; Jerry goes from tut-tutting Lucas for swearing to barking at Ted (Levi Burdick) to “shut the fuck up” as the Gruber Hills folk get locked and loaded when the portal glows red.
“Did somebody order…broom service?” quips McScruffy once the crones have all been dispatched and the carnage surveyed. McScruffy is a certifiable badass, no question, but his badassery is employed in service to Jerry, and Jerry, for all of his good qualities–a’la, his deep knowledge of the portal, its denizens, and their weaknesses–is a massive dork.
One wonders what kind of catchphrases McScruffy would have if he were working for an HOA run by another McScruffy. Presumably, one can’t be choosy about their clients in this line of work. Though categorizing their work is probably a bigger pain in the ass than managing an HOA that receives no emergency services. (Not to be a broken record, but: it’s because of the portal.)
Likewise, one can’t be too fussy about location when buying a home; low supply and high demand breed competition, and people will do all kinds of stuff, both creepy and endearing alike, to come out on top in a bidding war.
In a way, that’s the subtextual fantasy of Hold the Fort, tucked within the horror story on its surface. Wouldn’t it be nice to make an offer on a home and just, you know: get it? Forget that Gruber Hills is budget-friendly outside of the high HOA fees (which, as we learn, are to pay for the cost of stockpiling munitions and repairing the place after each Equinox).
Home ownership is core to the American dream. If Jenny has her qualms with HOAs as institutions–and she’s not wrong to have them–even she can’t deny how good it feels to have space that’s hers and Lucas’. “Look at these windows,” Lucas tells her in an effort to allay her frustrations, early in the movie. “Those are our windows. We own those windows. And the ceiling? We own this motherfucking ceiling!” He might be a bit of a twerp, but he’s charming, and Jenny’s smile says it all: what a feeling it is, to call the place you live in yours.
So, sure, maybe living in Gruber Hills wouldn’t be your style. Maybe it’s too much to ask to tangle with the forces of darkness on the Equinox just to have a roof over your head. But through confident slapstick and in its bloody, earnest way,
Hold the Fort invites viewers to think of home as something that’s worth fighting for, at a moment when the chance of owning appears to dwindle further by the day. Just hope that “fighting” is metaphorical, for everyone’s sake.
Hold the Fort is now available on VOD. Watch the trailer right here.
