Hell of a title, Bloody Axe Wound (now streaming on Shudder) – be a disgrace should you didn’t stay as much as it. Though it does, sort of, virtually, within the ol’ gore-’n’-guts dept., however that doesn’t essentially imply it’s a GOOD living-up to it. Author/director Matthew John Lawrence’s very indie horror-comedy mixes a little earnest emotion into this satire of and homage to the slasher style, casting Sari Arambulo because the inheritor to a serial-axe-murderer legacy who finds herself in a pinch when her subsequent designated kill is her girlfriend. Ulp. That dilemma is squeezed into a high-concept premise that might stand to be a lot decrease, and certain appears to be actively working towards tanking all the film. However perhaps it has its moments?
The Gist: I feel – these are key phrases, right here, “I feel” – the world of this film is one the place two rival serial slasher guys compete to make slasher films which might be really snuff movies, and no one’s the wiser. I feel. The film doesn’t make any of this fairly clear, together with how, precisely, they handle to movie their nasty nasty kills; we watch one in all them stalk and machete the life out of some poor youngsters, however by no means see a single increase mic, cinematographer, lighting individual, craft-services desk stuffed with shitty chilly cuts or any such ilk. It’s simply film magic, I assume. They kill and the ugly slashery seems on VHS tapes prepared for rental down on the nook brick-and-mortar. We’re unsure what 12 months it’s, nevertheless it’s a time of Yorx cassette-deck boomboxes, automobiles with keys that don’t have fobs and telephones connected to partitions by way of cords. So I’m going to guess… 1989. Shut sufficient.
Roger Bladecut (Billy Burke) is among the killers. He owns a video retailer the place he rents his Bladecut films, and enterprise is dwindling. That’s his day job. By night time, he circles faces within the native highschool yearbook and then places an X by means of the circles after he kills the house owners of the faces. He has a face even a mom may suppose twice about loving – suppose Temu Freddy Krueger – and a modest middle-class suburban house and a daughter who is aware of every little thing. That’s Abbie (Arambulo), and her dream is to fill her previous man’s sneakers and Jason Voorhees-like masks sometime. She’s like his acquainted. The film’s solely functionally amusing gag apes the previous slasher-movie routine of the killer who by no means dies: Abbie’s job is to bury Roger after he’s killed, so he can resurrect himself within the basic trend, by sticking his hand out of the mound of dust with dramatic aptitude, and haul himself from the grave.
At first, Roger blanches at Abbie’s need to hack up teenagers when he retires. Why? As a result of she’s a woman. That’s it. Simply plain and easy quiet-part-out-loud sexism. However he finally relents, and provides Abbie her first task: Sam Crane (Molly Brown of Dexter: Authentic Sin). Why her? She smokes pot, is promiscuous and is crass, Roger sez. Crass! Look within the mirror, bro! So Abbie dons a werewolf masks and fails miserably. Sam stabs her with a busted drumstick, as a result of she’s a drummer in an precise band that performs for audiences that quantity within the single digits. Abbie’s new in school (she was beforehand homeschooled, per the sloppy-ass screenplay) and on her first day guess who sidles as much as her? Proper. Sam. And Sam likes ladies. And I feel Abbie does too. That is a downside. A dilly of a pickle, you may say. Methinks Abbie has some finaglin’ to do.
What Motion pictures Will It Remind You Of?: Bloody Axe Wound is like Friday the thirteenth crossed with a John Hughes film directed by Sam Raimi’s budget-challenged fourth AD, if no one concerned gave a single rattling about continuity, modifying or any draft of the script after the primary.
Efficiency Value Watching: Brown’s laconic-cool Kristen Stewartisms are the one factor in the identical ballpark as charisma right here.
Memorable Dialogue: What passes for comedy on this film: “Valedictorian – extra like vale-no-more-ian.” – Sam
Intercourse and Pores and skin: None. In a slasher film homage. Some homage!
Our Take: From its opening little bit of voiceover narration that fails to put out the idea of the film with any succinctness or readability, Bloody Axe Wound struggles mightily to hold collectively. The movie is making an attempt to do approach an excessive amount of: A love story inside a satire inside a gorefest inside a post-Scream self-aware convoluted idea inside Gen X nostalgia. That’s a lot of stuff – all crammed into an 83-minute movie – and each little bit of it’s half-assed at greatest. Pare it all the way down to the suburban-dad/doting daughter dynamic, and you’ve bought an concept which you can simply render advanced with the love story and its built-in disaster of conscience. However because it stands, Bloody Axe Wound is a junk drawer of a screenplay stuffed with pens which might be out of ink, stray pennies, lifeless batteries and flashlights that use totally different batteries than those which might be lifeless. Time to scrub that shit out.
So with its greatest parts diminished by all of the overambitious bric-a-brac, the film is a actual patience-tester that laboriously works its approach by means of its miscellaneous tones, kitschy visible thrives and DOA comedy with none satisfying outcomes. The core relationships aren’t developed in any significant approach, and the shrugged-off context leaves us questioning why no one on the town appears to be doing or saying something concerning the mass culling of its youthful inhabitants.
It’s simple to admire Lawrence’s use of throwbacky sensible results (goremongers may admire one or two of those kills), however the retro visible aesthetic lacks the specificity to render it even shamelessly efficient nostalgia, and the clumsy modifying betrays an general dearth of comedian timing. By the point Abbie and Sam have collected three wacky associates and discovered themselves at an previous deserted campground within the third act (the film stops a millimeter shy of posing them beneath a picket signal that reads CAMP KILL ’EM ALL HAHAHAHAHA), the film has worn out its welcome and exhausted our goodwill. One other move or 4 by means of the phrase processor, and perhaps then we’re speaking.
Our Name: Reduce Bloody Axe Wound out of your queue. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance author and movie critic based mostly in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
