‘Spirit Tasting’ Review: Chris LaMartina’s Latest is Horror Love Drunk

Baltimore! Just had to get that out of the way, since Spirit Tasting, Chris LaMartina’s latest feature (and the first Terror Vision Original Production), is having its World Premiere at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland, tonight. I grew up near Baltimore, and there’s just something special to me about filmmakers like LaMartina (or Albert Birney of Obex) paying homage to their hometowns.

It helps that Spirit Tasting, like LaMartina’s WNUF Halloween Special, is positively brimming with indie, “post-punk” charm. It’s the special kind of horror movie imbued with the innate passion and enthusiasm its creative team has for the genre, and that heart and soul helps navigate the expected budgetary constraints (the film was shot in just four days for a meager $40,000).

Sean Doherty, Melissa LaMartina, and Trevor Wilhelms are old friends reconnecting on New Year’s Eve at their favorite former dive bar, now a distillery, to honor their late friend, sibling, and bandmate a year after his passing. They’re not in a particularly great spot to start, grappling with employment woes, grief, and that ever-elusive sense that the best of their days are behind them. Even before the spirits are poured, the pathos cut deep.

Alongside bartender Grace (Tatiana Nya Ford) and two other patrons, the trio of friends opt into an exclusive “spirit tasting” to turn the night around and give them all something worth remembering. That tasting (because this is a horror movie) has unexpected consequences, principally of the ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ variety. Co-writer Michael Varrati (you know who he is) riffs on the familiar unexpected consequence angle of W.W. Jacobs’ original short story, twisting the group’s innocuous, end-of-year wishes into devious, often gruesome, tableaux of carnage.

Will (Doherty), for instance, wishes for a promotion he’d just been passed over for. Moments later, he gets a call from his douche of a boss. Weird, the candidate they offered the role to just died, so the promotion is Will’s if he wants it. Comparatively, Will gets off easy. Running just over 70 minutes, Spirit Tasting, apropos of its title, is a sampler, if not exactly a full meal.