Spring (2014 film)

Spring, a 2014 film blending romance, science fiction, and horror, was directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. It stars Lou Taylor Pucci and Nadia Hilker. The story centers on Evan, a young man who goes to Italy and becomes involved with a woman named Louise, who is hiding a non-human nature. The movie first showed at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5, 2014, and later had a limited theatrical run starting March 20, 2015, distributed by Drafthouse Films. It won the Best Picture award at Austin Fantastic Fest.

After losing his mother to cancer, Evan gets into a fight at his restaurant job and is fired. Following a friend's suggestion, he travels to Italy and meets Louise, a flirtatious woman. He decides to stay in a small southern Italian town, working on a local farm to be near her. Louise initially rejects him but eventually has unprotected sex with him. The next morning, she appears monstrous before leaving and killing a cat. As they date, Louise reveals heterochromia by removing a contact lens, a trait Evan notices in museum paintings and a book cover. During dinner, Louise’s skin worsens, and she mutates into a reptilian creature, killing a tourist who mistakes her for a prostitute. When immigration police force Evan to leave the farm, he goes to Louise’s house, finds blood and a strange voice, and breaks in to inject a syringe into an octopus-like creature wearing her dress.

Louise then explains she is a 2,000-year-old mutant, the same woman in all those paintings. Every 20th spring, she finds a man to impregnate her, using the embryo’s cells to regenerate in a new body with the man’s DNA. During this process, she transforms into various evolutionary creatures. Shocked, Evan leaves but returns to hear more. She admits she avoided contraception to get pregnant and says falling in love would stop the process, making her mortal. When asked if she loves him, she says no and won’t give up immortality. Evan asks to spend her last 24 hours with her before she re-evolves. They talk all night, and she takes him to Pompeii, where she was born, sharing her family history. As dawn approaches, Evan begs her not to change; she warns she might attack him. He stays, and she rests her head on his lap while he speaks about mortality’s positives. He hears a grotesque sound but finds Louise still human as Mount Vesuvius erupts behind them.

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