Expelled from his previous school following a failed suicide attempt, Ethan (Benson Jack Anthony) enrols at Seymour High, a struggling state school subsidised by a pharmaceutical company shamelessly showering the student body in serotonin boosters. Eager to fit in, he naturally gravitates towards the school’s resident emo contingent, comprising band-mates Bradley (Rahart Adams), Roz (Lucy Barrett) and Jay (Ben Bennett), and soon finds himself joining the ranks of Worst Day Ever. Simultaneously, however, Ethan finds himself drawn to Trinity, (Jordan Hare), the lead singer of rival Christian outfit Hope Group, which promises to spell the end of his newfound anonymity.
A feature-length expansion of his award-winning 2014 short of the same name, Neil Triffett’s high school musical pitches warring clans — or cliques — against each other to timeworn effect. Worst Day Ever and Hope Group are Australia’s answer to Capulet and Montague, Barden Bellas and The Treblemakers, and as ever tradition dictates that belonging to either group precludes relations with another. Never mind that the emo subculture is on the wane — Triffett has admitted to sitting on the idea for Emo for years, since he first encountered the movement during a school exchange to the Tasmanian capital, and it shows — as this is a story about breaking the mould that inevitably transcends any single musical genre.
Neatly sidestepping the controversy and scorn that once surrounded the genre, Emo the Musical is a pastiche rather than a parody; Ethan is undoubtedly the film’s protagonist, and is compassionately painted in more than just black and white. One of the most impressive aspects of Triffett’s directorial debut is his diverse cast of charming and charismatic characters on both sides of the ideological divide. Whether it’s Rahart Adams’ Worst Day Ever front-man Bradley (“I haven’t seen him this mad since Christmas”) or Craig Hyde-Smith’s closeted Christian Peter (“If my love for you is responsible for global warming/I’ll gladly take the heat.”), the tribal teenagers face a timeless challenge: to overcome their peer-policed stereotypes and reinvent themselves in their own image.
Ultimately, however, it’s Hare who stands out from the crowd as Trinity, though admittedly she is at a considerable advantage having been allocated the film’s best song. As she struggles to reconcile her feelings for Ethan with her disapproving faith, having failed to surreptitiously baptise him in the family paddling pool, she launches into a full-throated and impassioned performance of “Could Jesus Have Been an Emo?” that ends in her excommunication from church group. It’s an absolute showstopper of a song — catchy and clever; like all the songs the lyrics are spectacularly ironic — that is only slightly undermined by the fact that it has almost no bearing on the characters or plot. Nevertheless, you spend much of the rest of the movie waiting for a reprieve.
As clearly confident as Triffett is in his concept, as committed and compelling as his cast might be, and as memorable as the songs may prove, Emo The Musical begins to falter in the third act when it loses focus and falls back on formula, with the State Rock Competition which concludes the story relying a little too heavily on contrivance and recycled songs. Ironically, as the boundaries blur and the mascara runs the film begins to lose its own sense of identity.
Emo the Musical is showing at the EIFF 2017
