Justin Benson is a Genre Filmmaker You Need to Know

Justin Benson looks at filmmaking as a self-reflexive process. The narratives he chooses to portray are concepts that he could find himself believing in, or has some connection to. According to Benson, who released his third feature film called The Endless in 2017, this is both in viewing and creating a project. Shortly before the filming of The Endless, Benson saw tragedy strike his life as his mother committed suicide. However, Benson saw the film as an opportunity to grieve and cope with his own experience. While the film itself was not written to apply to any event in his life, the narrative does follow a pair of brothers that return to a “possible suicide cult.” The film sports an underlying sense of grief, which is driven by the acting of both Benson and his recurring cinematographer Aaron Moorehead, who also acted as a co-director of the film.

The pair have three features under their belt, and the latest opened to critical acclaim and buzz. The Endless currently sits atop the Rotten Tomatoes top horror films of 2018 over recently released Ari Aster’s Hereditary, a film with much more commercial attention. This stigma of low-budget films that tend to follow filmmakers, like Ti West and Adam Wingard, are often portrayed in lacking the technical proficiency that some of the recent horror releases have displayed. While you won’t see the slow pushing, long shots we’ve become accustomed to in building tension in Benson and Moorehead’s films, this “poor” indie label should not apply because they are seeking to create their own tone— something that hasn’t been matched in any film I’ve seen.

Each film in the team’s portfolio offers something different for fans of genre filmmaking. I urge you, if you are unaware of Benson’s films, to seek them out and view them before reading this article because I don’t want to ruin a unique viewing experience. That being said, Resolution (2012), Spring (2014) and The Endless (2017) are examples of filmmakers that have found a way to both exercise creative freedom and personal beliefs. This desire was born in a small abandoned cabin for a low budget horror film, a formula that has succeeded in the genre before.

Resolution (2012)

In their first effort creating a feature, Benson and Moorehead knock it out of the park. The narrative at its core is something that one may write off as basic: a man holds his friend captive in the woods in an effort to help him get sober. From there, things only get weirder as they find that an outside force is controlling the events around them. There is genius in the writing here though for an indie filmmaker working with a micro-budget. The film is ultimately a practice in limited storytelling as the characters do not leave the cabin or the surrounding area. This limits the need for any obscure locations or set, but still can be compelling through a “looping” narrative. Backed by impressive acting by non-household names, Peter Ciella and Vinny Curran, Resolution creates a sense of unease/tension without having any sort of jump scare, gore or visible antagonist.

In my mind, Benson saw this as an opportunity to showcase the vision he and Moorehead shared, but lacked in the resources necessary to create a “spectacle” film. The lack of budget is apparent when watching, but it does not detract from the desire to continue. A lack of clarity kept me waiting….and waiting…and waiting, but when the credits rolled I wasn’t sure what had just taken place. Using techniques of classic horror films, like Evil Dead (1981) and Friday the 13th (1980), the viewer sees some of the events through the eyes of the antagonist, but unlike these films Resolution never reveals it’s cards. Upon the end, Vinny Curran (who plays the addict) agrees to get help, and the two seem to have reached a happy ending. They are soon interrupted with an entity appearing in the form of the audience, and Peter Ciella asking, “Can we try it another way?” This ambiguity may have been confusing at the time of the film’s release, but becomes much more clear in 2017 with the release of The Endless. Resolution ultimately acts as a loosely connected prequel to Benson’s 2017 release, which makes a second viewing almost necessary because the layers begin to unravel. However, in between their “connected universe” lies Spring (2014), a high concept romance film that takes a sinister turn.

Spring (2014)

Benson’s second film, also sporting Aaron Moorehead as co-director, feels different than the duo’s other two projects. Honestly, if I hadn’t watched this film before the other two, I may not know it was Benson’s work. Spring follows an American traveler abroad in Italy where the first segment of the film is his travels and experience, making the viewer feel as isolated in a foreign world as Evan (played by Lou Taylor Pucci). Soon, he meets a girl who he is immediately captivated with. The two begin a relationship, and the film for a bit dons a sweet, endearing tone; making the viewer fall for this mysterious woman in the same way our protagonist does. The image the film paints of the woman in the heads of it’s viewers is slowly shattered as we are shown the true nature of Evan’s romantic interest. This is where the tone of the film ultimately changes from a romantic rendezvous to a comedic interpretation of hidden secrets between partners. Lovecraftian in construction, Evan chooses to continue to date this woman, who is revealed to be a horrific squid-like humanoid that must regenerate every 20 years—hey, love is love. The film is ultimately an extreme example of the lengths people go to in order to make a relationship work, but also plays with the idea of outside influence in one’s love life and the perception of the outside world.

In a polar opposite decision executed in Resolution, Spring leans into it’s set, the beautiful city of Italy. Breaking away from limited storytelling, Benson is able to encapsulate the awe-inspiring nature of being abroad. Featuring a wide variety of drone shots, before they became over saturated, you get the sense that a significant selling point for the film was the showcase of the romanticism by Americans associated with foreign countries. This false application of romanticism can also be applied to the film’s end, as Louise (played by Nadia Hilker) must make her decision. If she does genuinely fall in love, she loses her immortality and ability to regenerate, and the 20-year mark is inconspicuously coming up two weeks after the couple met. She eventually “chooses” to fall in love with Evan, after repeatedly denying him, and the powers are banished. Whether this is a statement on sacrifice being necessary to make a relationship work or mocking the need to find a partner in today’s society, the film stands out in the plethora of generic rom-coms, and showcases the filmmaker’s desire to mix genres. Having gotten another film under their belt, Benson and Moorehead decided it was time to put some clarity into what the ending of Resolution was all about.

The Endless (2017)

This is the film that is essentially putting Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead on the map. Resolution and Spring received critical acclaim, but did not receive nearly as much media coverage as The Endless. The film opens with a man getting a videotape from an unknown source, but he clearly knows the subject in the video. Soon, a pair of brothers are on their way to somewhere familiar, and the source of the video is a UFO cult that they had escaped from when they were children. Upon arrival, things seem better than ever, and one of the brothers, played by Aaron Moorehead (who also co-directs), wonders why he ever left in the first place. The other brother, played by Justin Benson, can see through what he deems as a cult (even though they never label themselves as this), and does everything in his power to save his brother from falling back into the trap. This is obviously easier said than done as the “cult” shuns Justin and treats Aaron as one of their own in an attempt to turn the two against each other. This is already a conflict in itself, but the film takes a turn at around the halfway mark.

Justin concedes to his brother’s demands and lets the two stay longer than originally planned, and while Aaron spends quality time with a new found love interest, Justin explores the local area. The longer the two spend around the surrounding mountainous area, the more “off” things become. Essentially, without giving away too much, it is revealed that the surrounding areas are stuck in a time loop that is doomed to repeat for eternity. This is where Resolution comes in because during the 2012 film we are actually introduced to Aaron and Justin in their days in the cult. Naturally, in The Endless the characters from Resolution reappear and are now comfortable with their “endless” loop. Despite the connection, Benson does not view his films as a connected universe in the vein of Marvel films, which only adds to the mystery. The film is extremely complicated in nature, toying with ideas of the space-time continuum and a greater power that is controlling our lives, but it never becomes frustrating. The narrative flows perfectly, never leaving the viewer overly confused, and the tension is rooted in humanistic tendencies. As the loop is revealed, the conflict reveals that Justin must get his brother out ASAP, but Aaron is dealing with his own identity struggles. This self-doubt is something that occurs both on an external and internal level, as the filmmakers return to characters that apply to their early film career.

The result of The Endless is one that I have never dealt with before. There is multiple layers to the source of conflict, as chronicled by Justin Benson. The conflict in all of Benson and Moorehead’s films can be interpreted in multiple ways, which is no different in The Endless. However, the idea of conformity is one that is present in every film I’ve discussed, but on a deeper level where the filmmakers are refusing to conform to a viewer’s expectation of a narrative. They continue to subvert expectations regardless of what the audience desires in an effort to carve out their own unique blend of genre mixing horror. Don’t sleep on these two; you’ll be hearing their names more and more over the next few years.

-Jacob Kline