Star Rating:

Hide Your Smiling Faces

Director: Daniel Patrick Carbone

Actors: Colm O'Leary, Nathan Varnson, Ryan Jones

Release Date: Saturday 30th November 2013

Genre(s): Drama

Running time: 81 minutes

Eric and Tommy are brothers, one quite a bit older than the other, and both just trying to get by day by day in their mostly abandoned town that looks as if nature is just one day away from entirely reclaiming as its own. Eric is in his late-teens and spends his days wrestling and trying to talk his best friend out of committing suicide, while Tommy is just hitting his early teens and still discovering himself and the world around him. When one of Tommy’s friends is found dead near a local bridge, it has a severe effect on the two brothers, neither of which are particularly well prepared for dealing with their own mortality.

While at times it can be a little too ponderous and existential, mostly Hide Your Smiling Faces creates a uniquely suffocating atmosphere of dread and death, one which permeates everything in these young boy’s lives. The movie opens with a snake slowly devouring its still living prey, and throughout we see the corpses of pets, wild animals and children, as well as people’s homes and lives completely lost to nature.

Writer/director Daniel Patrick Carbone can now safely add his name to the ever growing list of people who would be suitable to take the reins of a future episode of True Detective, with his sticky, turgid style perfectly capturing the inescapable turmoil of being young and seeing no hope in your future.

Ryan Jones and Nathan Varnson are spectacular as Tommy and Eric respectively, both still trying to stake out their own masculinity however they can, with weak father figures and very little female presence to be found throughout. Yes, the sparse dialogue can get a little heavy-handed, and yes, even at brisk 81 minutes, Carbone seems unsure how to end his story appropriately, so goes for the most abrupt conclusion imaginable, but he is at least attempting something arty and meaningful all at once.

Imagine one of the kids from Stand By Me was depressed and died mid-journey, and the rest debated suicide to join him in death; that’s what you’re getting with Hide Your Smiling Faces.