This may sound like a contradiction or beside the point, but personally, it’s the “palate cleansers” at a horror festival—the movies that stray from the fest’s titular genre—that mark it out as one to pay attention to. Some don’t offer those, whereas the good ones do. Soho Horror has long since had these credentials, and it continues to, thanks to some neat programming choices. From that selection this year is The Misadventures of Vince and Hick, a comic book approach to the crime caper movies that used to be ten-a-penny in the 1990s. In this case, Trevor Stevens directs Heston Horwin’s script, which is full of eccentrics and grotesques.
Opening with a black and white passage, we are introduced to Hick Dunn (Chase Cargill), a down-and-out sort who seemingly spends long spells in prison for multiple cases of Grand Theft Auto. He wants to spend time with his daughter, but the grim reality of his situation makes that challenging. The movie spins into colour when Hick meets Vincent Campell (Heston Horwin, who also produces). Hick tries to steal Vince’s car, only for it to run out of petrol in the middle of a motorway. After catching up and a brief scuffle, they realise they both went to the same high school, albeit a few years apart. One thing leads to another, and eventually the pair become part of an effort to steal and transport a classic car through New Mexico for some less-than-savoury gangland sorts. A simple plot, just one filled with a variety of weird and wonderful characters and ruses.
A magnetic, appealing personality that will ensure it finds an audience no matter where it ends up.
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While plenty entertaining, I feel that as a British viewer (or perhaps a non-comic book reading one), a layer of its cultural context was completely lost on me. There’s a level of referentialism that points to a style of comic book just not hugely popular here in the UK, so many of the gags completely missed me. It’s not a critical issue, but a lot of the comedy did next to nothing for me. It may be churlish to focus on things that don’t travel well outside of America, but this speaks to the movie’s broader appeal. Furthermore, it causes issues when you have to discover a world with minimal points of reference—you could say that this expectation of prior knowledge is a shortcoming in Horwin’s script, however, it is papered over, somewhat, by the vivid visual presentation treating this New Mexican criminal world as if it were a cartoon.
Everything has a larger-than-life feeling, which manifests through comic panels appearing on screen, cartoon-style sound effects injected into scene transitions, and a saturated (or completely desaturated, in the case of the black and white scenes) colour grade. The characters, however, are where The Misadventures of Vince and Hick finds its greatest value. Hick is the down-to-earth grounding, as are the people in his life. He writes stories to his daughter, too scared to tell the truth—and these heightened tales are envisioned through a series of hand-drawn images, as bringing them to life any other way would be impossible. Meanwhile, every single member of the criminal underbelly has a zaniness reminiscent of the Coen Brothers’ early comedies or the buddy-cop dynamic akin to Jackie Chan’s Shanghai movies with Owen Wilson, just with a bit more edge.
Within the confines of a horror film festival, The Misadventures of Vince and Hick provides the sort of energy boost needed to continue marathoning movies, serving everything you need from a good palate cleanser. Weirdly, given some of the films it plays alongside, Heston Horwin and Trevor Stevens’s collaboration has an everyman quality; you could watch it with anyone, and they’d come away having had a fun time—a feeling that seems contrary to the niche focus of a genre festival. Outside those confines, it has the feeling of a movie you’d discover on Tubi. Sure, the title isn’t the most appealing, but it has a presentational zest that draws you in. That is a trait many filmmakers would kill for, and while it may not linger long in the mind, that magnetic, appealing personality will ensure it finds an audience no matter where it ends up.
THE MISADVENTURES OF VINCE AND HICK HAD ITS EUROPEAN PREMIERE AS PART OF SOHOME HORROR FEST 2025
