By David Dent
Nobody seems to make horror films anymore; everything feels very borderline, is if directors are afraid to bring on the monsters. Or maybe filmmakers have just worked out that there’s nothing so monstrous as the human condition.
Certainly anything monstrous in Italian director Villablanca’s Healing Andy is resolutely human in form, despite the found footage setup and the vaguely supernatural overtones. The Andy of the title (Matthew Kay) is, when we first meet him via Zoom call, a blubbering wreck, having been jilted pre wedding. His best mates, Instagram ‘star’ Holger (Frederick Lysegaard), Malcolm (Samuel Nunes de Souza) and Maverick (Elliott Eason) are duty bound to ‘heal’ Andy, by suggesting that they should reframe the prebooked honeymoon in Italy as a boy’s adventure; and record the whole thing on their phones.
Once abroad, and in keeping with the idea of four single guys out to have a good time, it’s not long before they bump into four girls, one of whom is their holiday rep, Ginger (Gemma Acosta). But after their first night of partying, things go rapidly downhill for the boys; we’ve been warned at the beginning of the movie that, in true FF style, the recovered camera footage is all that remains of the missing chaps, and we’re about to find out why.
Healing Andy may be a little drawn out for a ‘first person’ or ‘assembled footage’ movie, but where it does score plus points is in very real depictions of a group of men somwheat lacking in maturity. The plot chucks in references to Home Alone, Raiders of the Lost Ark and pretty much every FF film you’ve ever sat through (the movie was actually shot on iPhones, and as such it’s a miracle it’s so watchable). Horror elements exist in the movie, albeit fleetingly, but despite this it’s hard to see why it was selected for a ‘Fantastic Films’ Festival, as this is mainly a story of camaraderie under threat, if a fitfully funny one.
Healing Andy screened as part of Frightfest 2025.
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