Nate is an NYC artist who’s never had his own solo show. His girlfriend leaves him for a popular but terrible artist, and Nate becomes jealous of his fame. He stumbles upon a music video for a song called “I’ll Cut Your Dick Off” by Young Torture Killaz, a group of teenagers making rap rock music in rural Delaware. It feels raw, pure, outsider. He travels to take pictures of them, and ends up partying and providing drugs to fuel his photographic subjects.
Hellaware (2013) is a satire of the art world. The posturing, the networking, the unethical appropriation of others’ work. Nate is a completely unlikable protagonist who gives drugs to teenagers then sells photos of them doing drugs. It reminds me of Buzzard or Ape by Joel Potrykus, films about young white men getting away with opportunistic crimes. Where the hero of Buzzard is kind of fun and tortured, Nate is just kind of a shitbag.
This is where I tell you about how my misconceptions colored my experience watching this film. I incorrectly assumed, based on the title and poster, that Hellaware was a horror film. The kids threaten Nate and finally come after him by stink bombing, disrupting, and vandalizing his art show. This is where I realized my mistake, because I expected they’d actually cut his dick off like the song. What actually happened seem tame, and the boost it gives to Nate’s career was a predictable twist.
I thought this was a pretty fun art world satire, but it could have used more doom. Nate is a bad person and nothing bad really happens to him. The rappers should have cut his dick off.
