REVIEW: Hanah’s Gift

- By Chris Barnes

2008’s Hanah’s Gift, written and directed by Zac Baldwin, has slipped quietly under most people’s radar, unless you happened to spot it at a festival all those years back. The reason it may have escaped my personal net is because it looks every inch the tired found footage yarn I’ve feverishly babbled on about in numerous, tedious posts (no, YOU shut up! Jeez…). Cutting a long story short, I’ve since been personally asked to give it a whirl and, I have to admit, a few of its elements were a pleasant surprise - on extremely rare occasions, the sub-genre CAN still show me something I haven’t seen before! Who knew?! (Rare. I repeat, rare.)

Our viewpoint for this entire 90-minute feature is from the titular character’s perspective and by far the film’s most charming, original aspect. Hanah is a young, mute autistic girl, encouraged to practice her unique ability of projecting her consciousness into the minds of other people – effectively seeing what they see - by her hyperactive friend Toby (Victoria Engelmayer), and it’s not long before we have a whole host of skewed brainboxes to snoop around in. The care home in which the 2 girls live is to play host to an anger management group therapy session and state-appointed therapist Stacy (J.T. Williams) seems every inch as damaged as the clients she’s been employed to counsel.

Being shown through the eyes of an all-seeing, unspeaking character allows for some interesting situations, all without having to answer the age-old found footage conundrum: Why is there a camera there and why are you still FILMING this chaos?! The transitioning effect when Hanah’s vantage point would ‘wander’ about, moving from place to place and person to person, is a pretty impressive turn and handled well. Beyond this, as with a lot of films with such a low budget, you have to look passed the mixed, hit-and-miss acting performances and technical glitches in order to determine whether a project has a solid foundation - Hanah’s Gift is indeed inventive, if not slickly executed.

As well as the nifty POV design, director Baldwin cranks up the originality of Hanah’s Gift by employing a ‘real time’ format, with lengthy single-take shots that are impressive technically and inventively. So, despite having to sit through a full-length group therapy meeting (which aint too far away from my day job), the overall concept and structure of the film will keep you intrigued enough to stick this one out, even if the script and strained sound design do their best to drag you away from the narrative - the most effective scenes being the ones with minimal talking.

The standout acting performances come from Engelmayer (which I never thought possible after the first few minutes, until I realised she was SUPPOSED to be as annoying as thrush – think American Pie’s bandcamp-loving Michelle on acid) and Melanie Wise, as the brooding, quiet, muscular Tyler - although her action-hero physique isn’t utilised as well as it could have been, given the film’s action/violent turn midway through.

Although a tad drawn out over 90 minutes and possibly more suited to a tighter, shorter runtime, the story isn’t a bad one – though, the therapy session and awkward mid-stalk romance cause the film to suffer some serious dragging and audience detachment – so, if you’re a fan of no-budget independent films with well-designed and thought-out twists within a 1st-person experience, this may be your thing.

- By Chris Barnes