WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS BODYCOUNT. HIGH RISK OF SPOILERS. ENTER IF YOU DARE.

Monday, January 6, 2025

So, a little update...

I'm actually on Letterboxd now and I'm busy re-posting (and polishing) my reviews from here to there! 

Hoping this'll help me branch out my slashet obsession further into the interwebs so, if you feeling like it, drop on by The Clown Cafe. And then pay a visit to my page.

See you all there, too! Happy New Year!


Tuesday, December 24, 2024

A Slay Belle In Toymaker Hell: Carnage For Christmas (2024)

Carnage For Christmas (Australia, 2024)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: Jeremy Moineau, Chris Asimos, Dominique Booth

As someone who's been subjecting oneself to slasher horror for some good decades or so, I've seen a lot of unusual jabs on the bodycounter sub-genre, may it be plot-wise or execution. One moment you're watching an angry snowman end someone by repeatedly bashing them with Christmas ornaments, or trapped teens get hunted down inside a mall by robots armed with lasers; next you're watching a murder mystery unfold ala gimmicky split screens, or follow the steps of a backwoods maniac as they hike through a dense forest looking for people to kill with little to no dialogue uttered. Cinema is a strange landscape, and horror movies will always be a part of its strangeness. 

And yet, here I am at a lost on what to make of this holiday stab-a-thon.

Returning to her hometown of Purdan for the first time after coming out of the closet and legging it from there when she was just 16 years old, true crime podcaster Lola (Jeremy Moineau) expects nothing but small town backwardness and transphobic insults from its residents upon her arrival. What she didn't see coming, though, is a bit of a warm welcome from a few good folks looking forward on meeting her, either fans of her podcast or queer like her. There's also the fact that Lola is a little of a local celebrity for solving an unsolved crime back when she was just a kid while partaking on a coming-of-age dare. One that involves an old house where, allegedly, a toymaker killed his entire family back in the 1930s. 

However, much to her and the town's horror, it appears the Toymaker, or likely someone insane enough to take on the role, has started a killing spree seemingly targeting people around Lola's circle. The police, either out of sheer homophobia or incompetence (or both), quickly dismisses these killings as "botched robberies" or simply "missing people". But not for Lola. No, she knows something is up when the cops are ignoring the fact that this is more than a simple crime case when the evidence is all over it, and she's going to use her skills and experience as a true crime podcaster to uncover the truth and stop the murderer before more lives are taken!

By all means, Carnage for Christmas (2024) has a good story to tell, one that feels like a fun rainy afternoon murder mystery you could cuddle up to with a hot drink, only queer-friendly and, well, gory given it's about a brain-bashing brute in a dirty Santa suit and mask. The plot is engagingly complex with red herrings and twisty turns, as well as a few good humor tossed around to lighten up a few moments. All of it driven by a tough and sassy amateur sleuth who takes no nonsense from sloppy cops and transphobic yokels, quick to think on her feet and surrounded by a small yet likable enough cast of side characters willing to help out so long as they don't fall victim to the Toymaker first. It's misadventures and shocking surprises around for this small town whodunnit, though it's executed in a rather "venturesome" manner that's distracting at its worst. 
 
While the mystery has a decent weight to it, there are moments where it gets a bit much with the details and characters, plenty of them popping up only to do nothing but be on the back burner until the story finds the appropriate time to bring them up again. The movie's untrammeled editing is also a cavalcade of overdone stylization, too hammed up and brashly experimental that it often feels out of place against the movie's film's more serious notes. The writing can be too on the nose on occasion, nearing cheeky, and the kills are, sadly, lackluster despite the attempts to make them feel or look gnarly. There's a "blood eagle" corpse that does look nice and I do like the one murder involving a hand-crank drill for the novelty of the weapon, but the rest were done with these store bought props, awkward graphics and CG blood effects that they're awfully frustrating to look at.   

And then there's the finale; what could have been your simple brawl between an unmasked maniac and the final girl starts with our podcaster pretty much explaining how she figured out the killer's motive and what led them to this path of murdering and mayhem, all the while trying to avoid being detected by crawling around and rolling behind tables and boxes while the maniac stalks around an empty bar. They fight with B-grade choreography and it seems the killer was about to get the upper hand, until a pair of fake boobs knocks them unconscious and, well, gets tazed to the point of defecating. I shit you not. (pun intended) 

It's this overly manic execution and mismatched comedic tone that just doesn't work for me; I like the lead gal, the urban myth that goes along with the masked slasher and, too, the reveal made regarding the killer's modus operandi, but a more consistent flow and direction would have made me like this movie a bit more. Perhaps the movie could have benefitted from a tweak or two in its direction, but the resulting product is still unique enough to standout among murder mystery slashers and queer horror, not to mention decently passable for a modern Ozploitation indie work. Feel free to see Carnage for Christmas (2024) for your fix of yuletide nightmares, just don't expect to take it too seriously...

Bodycount:
1 male gutted with a switchblade (story)
1 female brained to death with a hammer
1 female brained with a hammer, later found disemboweled
1 female jabbed in the neck with a breast drill
1 male brained with a hammer, scalp pried open
Total: 5

Monday, December 9, 2024

Just North of Michigan, A Hunting Ground: Deer Camp '86 (2022)

Deer Camp '86 (2022)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Noah LaLonde, Jay J. Bidwell, Arthur Cartwright

The year is 1986 and it's deer season; after spending some time sulking over a nasty breakup, Wes finally decided to get out of the emotional muck and join his friends on a deer hunting trip out in the Michigan wilderness. We see him and the gang already driving to an old hunting lodge with a freshly killed doe strapped on top of their Chevy Suburban, stopping at roadhouse for some directions, drunken shenanigans and, for Wes, a darling attempt for another love life as he flirts with the feisty Native American bartender named Star. A flirt that she seemingly reciprocates.

Unbeknownst to Wes, sadly, their little spark of romance isn't meant for long when Star gets killed behind the bar by an unknown assailant just as the gang's leaving once again for their trip. He wouldn't know about this tragedy until the following morning, when the local sheriff stops by to speak with them about anything they may have known about the murder. Suspiciously enough, the sheriff isn't all too surprised about the death. In fact, this appears to be an occurrence every deer season and it always ends with even more deaths and mutilation. 

And, true enough, once the group continues on with their deer-shooting escapades, something otherworldly begins to take hold of the hunt; fresh kills are found infested with maggots, electronics going haywire with ghostly voices and, most concerning of them all, an animal skull-wearing figure brandishing a tomahawk is seen prowling the woods, hunting the hunters...

Taking cues from slasher classics like Friday The 13th (1980) and The Burning (1981), Deer Camp '86 (2022) approaches its tale of backwoods massacres building around our band of knuckleheads from Detroit first, focusing on their beer-guzzling, rifle-totting misadventures in deer hunting, as well as broodingly hinting the horrors to come. It's a direction that works swell enough with the crafted caricatures filling out our crew; Wes (Noah LaLonde), our defacto leader, has his occasional swing as a sweetheart despite sometimes coming rather bland; Simon (Arthur Cartwright), the token black guy, characterizes himself as the sensible one, thus knowing when to play it safe; J.B. (Brian Michael Raetz), the group drunk, who can be good with a camcorder and a truck given he's not boozed out; Karlos (Josh Dominguez), a war veteran suffering from a serious case of intensity, making him a bit too into the hunt; Buck (Jay J. Bidwell), a large and rotund fella who's quick with the jokes; and poor Egbert (David Lautman), the meek and dorky butt-monkey in his first hunt. Not everyone is written out to be complex or absolutely likeable, but they're loud, brash and often trashed enough to make themselves entertaining and fun, even more so when the jokes and quips these fellas throw out land a good laugh, if not a giggle at least.

As the good times roll, the danger that seems to have latched unto the group would eventually make its move in the flesh after spending a decent run as a brooding presence, or as a creepy ghostly occurrence. Though the kill count is a little low and it's a swig lacking on the creative side, I do dig the killer's get-up of fur cloaks and a large animal's skull, boasting supernatural prowess that easily establishes themselves as a threat. The lore surrounding them is peppered throughout the film, tying in folklore and even some social commentary regarding the ongoing cycle of prejudice and hate, but the gist of it is that this creature is vengeance on two legs. One that comes with a surprise twist reveal, which is then followed up by a rather confusing final shot.

Truth be told, Deer Camp '86 (2022) isn't winning points for innovating the basic slasher plot. It's more of the same campout-gone-wrong deal we've seen plenty by now, albeit not without a few good turns and ideas. I like the beer-fueled comradery of the group and their over-the-top hijinks. I like how the last act is practically a showcase of the slasher being the bigger predator out in the woods. There's room for improvement, no doubt about that, but the end product is still an agreeable B-grade bodycounter. 

Bodycount:
1 female stabbed in the head with a buck knife
1 male killed offscreen, later found disemboweled
1 male hacked on the head with a tomahawk
1 male hacked on the chest with a tomahawk
1 male stabbed in the head with a buck knife
Total: 5

Monday, November 25, 2024

A You'tombed Prank Video: Milk & Serial (2024)

Milk & Serial (2024)
Rating: ***
Starring: Curry Barker, Cooper Tomlinson, Adlih Alvarado

It all started as a Youtube video for a channel called "Prank Bros", wherein social media personality Seven plans to pull a birthday prank on his roommate, bestfriend and creative partner, Milk. After acquiring a gun from a shady arms dealer and getting an acting class friend to agree playing the part of a terrorizing crazed gunman, Seven's gag goes swimmingly well with Milk laughing it all off once he gets past the initial shock, even admiring the elaborate planning that went into making it.

Funs and games continue for the party until an odd fella who claims to be Seven and Milk's neighbor arrives to complain about the noise. Creepily. Milk, thinking the guy is a part of an ongoing prank by Seven, antagonizes him, resulting to stranger things happening in the following days after the party. Things involving deadly secrets, manipulations and harrowing deaths.

Written, directed and starring actual Youtuber Curry Barker, despite being advertised as a slasher, Milk & Serial (2024) has more common grounds with a serial killer thriller, one that's done as a twisty, hour-long $800 found footage free to watch on Youtube. It may not sound much, but the film does surprisingly succeed in places one wouldn't expect from a micro-production like this, mainly the acting and the grounded tone its working with. The mystery as to what's going on after the surprise birthday prank could've been a lot better if some of its twists weren't so obvious (the movie is called Milk & Serial and its poster features a creepy blonde man in a transparent mask. Guess who's nicknamed "Milk" and also happens to be blonde?), but the sinister downward spiral to escalating horrors still makes this little passion project a captivating watch for how fluid the direction can get, plus Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson play their roles of Milk and Seven respectively with such an impressive range, it's hard not to feel a bit invested to where the plot is leading to. (Overlooking the odd nicknames, of course)

Seeing there's more emphasis here on a nightmare situation brewing than the hands-on handiwork of a masked killer, Milk & Serial (2024) is a little low on the creative kill count and splatter. The most brutal this film got is a savage neck stabbing, but apart from that, it's mostly gun kills and one beating that's mostly offscreen. This is likely not going to serve well passionate gorehounds expecting the typical bodycounting affairs, but if you're in it for unsettling creepiness and distress, then this may not be that big of a set back. 

Though far from reinventing anything, Milk & Serial (2024) shows quality you don't typically find in a lot of do-it-yourself horror titles and that's a respectable feat. Nothing too fancy, but a slight step above low-budget shlock, it's a creeper of a movie that's good enough to try!

Bodycount:
1 male shot
1 female brained with a brick, beaten to death
1 male knifed in the neck
1 male shot
1 male shot
Total: 5

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Livin' in Your Precious Memory: Time Cut (2024)

Time Cut (2024)
Rating: ***
Starring: Madison Bailey, Antonia Gentry, Michael Shanks

Ray Bradbury's classic science fiction short A Sound of Thunder basically introduced to us one of the basics of time travel physics, in which the smallest alterations to the distant past could snowball into catastrophic changes in history. It's a fascinating idea, one that is explored and exploited in media through various angles from the adventurous (the Back To The Future trilogy), to the hilarious (the Time and Punishment segment from The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror V episode), to the grim. (Spain's time travel 'slasher', Timecrimes (2007)) Netflix's Time Cut (2024) seems to be another horror jab at the time travel concept, one that's a tad more in touch with its emotional side.


Living in the broken town of Sweetly, under the roof of a pair of overprotective parents haunted by a tragedy, Lucy Field (Madison Bailey) longs for nothing more than to leave the place and seek a better life for herself. One that isn't under the constant shadow of her late sister, Summer (Antonia Gentry), who she never met being one of the four victims of an uncaught serial killer dubbed 'The Sweetly Slasher'.

During one of these days wherein she's tagged along by her family to the spot of Summer's brutal murder to pay their respect, Lucy wanders around and finds a mysterious machine hidden inside a nearby dilapidated building. She soon discovers this is a time machine and, after approaching it, got sent back to the year 2003, days before the Sweetly Slasher's reign of terror, practically giving Lucy the chance to save Summer and, maybe, anybody else who will be murdered. Though at what cost?


Admittedly, the writing and acting for Time Cut (2024) is what kept me glued to the story as I can't help but feel invested to this time travel dilemma; there's a sense of weight to how it presents the catastrophic drawbacks of tinkering with the flow of time and reality, especially once Lucy learns that by saving her sister, she might cease to exist as their parents will not have a reason to want another child. I love how this paradoxical universe-manipulation is used to build conflict within the plot and its characters as arguments concerning the consequences of bending a destined path often clashes with one's moral duty to help, especially if it comes with the advantage to chance a better outcome. This leaves us with a set of main characters that not only feels smarter than your typical slasher party of mincemeat victims, but also has a bit of heart to them, even more so when the story takes its time to focus on the sisterly bond between the two Field girls as Lucy begins to know Summer and learn why she is so beloved, all the while Summer is given the opportunity through Lucy to be more herself as she opens up her own insecurities and uncertainties. Bailey and Gentry simply nailed their roles and I just can't help but feel fine and cozy whenever their characters share their heart-to-hearts.

Now, this is where the film does meet its drawback; with Time Cut (2024) putting more effort to its teen drama, the slasher elements really took a backseat to the point that it's barely felt; Yes, we do get a neat opening act where Summer gets hunted and killed by a knife and scythe-wielding masked maniac. Yes, we also got a good enough last act where the teens form a trap to stop the Sweetly Slasher, resulting to a twist reveal that isn't too shocking for me, but still is cleverly implemented otherwise. Hell, we even got a decent mall murder spree with savage kills and a nice chase set-up at a small town museum, but these are all far in between and edited kinda clunkily. It's quite a shame, really, as the movie does have a simplistic yet workable villain who isn't shy on showcasing a bit of brutality, but the teen scifi soap appears to be the greater focus here, so the good lot of you hoping for a steady stream of massacred victims may find this disappointing.


Still, Time Cut (2024) is an alright enough movie on my book; not particularly a shining example of a time travel slasher done right, but as a sugary teen horror drama with a bit of heart and a bit of slaughter, it's watchable if you're not asking for much. But if you are in the mood for something with more teeth and cheek, well, there's always Totally Killer (2023)...

Bodycount:
1 female slashed with a scythe, killed offscreen
1 male stabbed in the neck with a broken DVD disc
1 female brained to death against an escalator
1 male gets a hunting knife to the gut
1 male found death from a throat cut
1 male stabbed in the chest with a hunting knife
Total: 6

Friday, November 1, 2024

It's a Terrifier Christmas, Let Horror Fill Your Heart: Terrifier 3 (2024)

Terrifier 3 (2024)
Rating: ****
Starring: Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton, Antonella Rose

I'm just gonna put it out there that I was considering knocking down a few points from this movie for being a Christmas slasher because, damn it! The Terrifier franchise already established itself as a Halloween staple all the way back to its iconic killer's first appearance in Damien Leone's short, The 9th Circle (2008), and y'all wanna terrorize another holiday? Way to break the momentum! 

But, hey, this little blow to my obsessive compulsiveness aside, Terrifier 3 (2024) is just a damn good movie.

The film opens on a night before Christmas, with a girl named Juliet having a tough time sleeping, disturbed by the weird noises she's been hearing. Her family dismisses her concerns, explaining it away as just the house settling (or Santa's elves), but Juliet isn't convinced. Not when the noises start to resemble footfalls. Once her folks go back to bed, the little darling decided to snoop a bit, soon spotting none other than Santa Claus himself walking to their Christmas tree and pulling out from his sack... a heavy axe. What was once a silent night becomes a gory night as every single one from this family gets hacked apart, dismembered all the way, revealing to us that under the red suit and heavy boots isn't a jolly old fat man. It's Art the Clown, up and walking around once again!


Jump back to five years ago; after another Halloween rampage, Art seems to have met his match when one of his supposed victims, Sienna Shaw, fought back and managed to defeat him by cutting his head clean off with a seemingly mystic sword. This, however, is no setback for the clown as his now headless body kills its way to where his head ended up after the brawl, at the psychiatric clinic holding one of his former victims, the heavily disfigured Victoria Heyes, who appears to have finally succumbed to whatever demonic forces at play here. The two escapes, leaving more bodies on their trail as they flee back to Art's dilapidated hideout-slash-work shop where they go into a dormant state.
 
Moving ahead to the present, Sienna Shaw is undergoing a great deal of therapy as the events of that one Halloween night haunt her to this day, with visions of her dead friends and family blaming her for their demises. Upon her release from a mental health center, she's to stay with her aunt Jess' family, an arrangement Jess' husband Greg isn't too sure about despite putting on a cheerful face whenever Sienna is in the room with them, fearing she's one or two breakdowns away from endangering the family. Their daughter Gabbie, however, is simply ecstatic to have her big cousin around, completely unaware of the nightmares Sienna's dealing with. 

All the while, Jonathan, Sienna's kid brother, is now in college trying to move on with his life, something that's proven to be a tad hard when his sister is keeps blaming herself for surviving and just wouldn't let it go, as well as the fact that there will always be someone out there who will recognize him as one of the 'supposed' survivors of a killing spree perpetrated by Art the Clown, who at this point is something of a Miles County urban legend.


And speaking of the devil; when couple of demolition workers arrive to inspect a rather familiar dilapidated house, they didn't expect to find both Art and Victoria there, now awakened from their unnatural slumber and ready to take more lives as brutally as possible. With this starts another round of murders and torture for ole' Art, and with it being the Christmas season, he's gonna try on some new looks and explore new painful ways to end people. Hell, maybe he and his new accomplice will even take the time to be home for the holiday and celebrate it with a certain girl who got away the only way they can: with a crown of thorns (and razor blades), rat torture and even a roaring chainsaw...

As you watch Terrifier 3 (2024) start itself with the annihilation of a random family before treating you with a gag of a headless body wearing a victim's head to get around inconspicuously, and then grossing you out with the imagery of a now-demonic woman eating chewed flesh straight out of a still-living decapitated head's own gullet, you know damn well that this movie's going to continue the franchise's tradition of delivering some of the most-messed up things you could pull off in a slasher flick and I'm glad to say it's done all here with some noticeable improvements; for one, the pacing is just a breeze, wonderfully balancing out the story of our heroine undergoing an emotional and mental crisis as she tries to live a normal life past that one gore-soaked Halloween massacre, with that of Art the Clown being, well, Art the Clown. Just savage hijinks with a good dose of black humor that only a creepy grinning killer mime can pull off. The direction wisely opted to not overly dwell on the plot to the point that it overcooks the drama and character depth, giving it time to breathe a bit in between brutal hijinks of little mall kids getting one hell of a Christmas popper courtesy of Art, or that of a man getting the skin and flesh of his head dressed down from the skull while a disfigured witch watches and sodomize herself with a mirror shard. (Yes. You read that right) 

Curiously, apart from Sienna's descent towards a fractured case of survivor's guilt and her increasingly strained relationship with her brother, Terrifier 3 (2024) technically adds nothing that we didn't already know since the last film. Rather, it expanded upon what was given before and dives further down its layers, throwing in biblical lore behind Art's supernatural durability and immortality, as well as Sienna's mysterious sword for what could be a set-up to something big and immaculate in the future. It's not hard to see how this scattershot plotting can get real testy for some audience, as the increasingly overcomplicated mythology could stray the franchise away from what was originally just a simple story of a deranged clown killing folks, but for some of us who can roll with the punches, it's a tolerable dent on a showcase of gore and darkly hilarious clownery. Plus, admittedly, my curiosity is peaked by what they're hinting here. I mean, how couldn't you when one of these visions involves a living statue of the Virgin Mary seemingly commanding a chained demon to forge the armor of a warrior angel in hellfire? That's not simple badassery. That's pure metal!


One cannot deny, too, the top-tier special effects here; despite some of these being your typical slasher murder fares of axe hackings or knife murders, the way they're executed to push the boundaries of an iron stomach keeps them fresh, the increasing absurdity of their own brutality fitting nicely with its darkly imaginative savagery and/or the unrelenting intensity of its overkills. One axe blow isn't enough to kill someone here, oh no. Unlike most slashers out there, Terrifier 3 (2024) wanted to make sure a victim is dead and that typically means more than a couple of whacks! And, yes, why not get kooky and experimental with the murder weapons? Would a handheld tank that blows liquid nitrogen do? Of course, all of this wouldn't mean much if it wasn't for David Howard Thornton's morbidly charming portrayal of Art the Clown, who's at his most expressive here considering the clown is basically playing pretend as Santa Claus, spinning his own take on Christmas spirit and holiday cheers via cartoonish body language and facial acting, effectively hiding his deadly intentions. From enthusiastically losing himself over meeting "Santa", to mockingly mute laughing at a wife's distress while hacking apart her husband, Art continues to be a real slasher icon and there's no sign of slowing down or stopping!

Thus the saga of this hyper-violent slasher franchise continues and Terrifier 3 (2024) sets itself as a real solid treat as a holiday bodycounter, may it be Halloween's or Christmas'. There's room for improvement, sure, but it's safe to say that this one undoubtedly served the demented and the defiled! The gruesome and the gory! Have a Terrifier Christmas! Let horror fill your heart!

Bodycount:
1 boy hacked to pieces with an axe
1 male hacked to death with an axe
1 female hacked to death with an axe
1 girl killed with an axe (heavily implied)
1 male killed offscreen, head seen
1 female killed offscreen, later found being eaten
1 male had his head pried apart
1 male murdered offcamera, clothes seen
1 male jabbed in the neck, stabbed to death with a mirror shard
1 male had his head cut open with a box cutter, flesh flayed off
1 male shot on the head
1 male shot on the neck, bled to death
1 male had his limbs and head sprayed with liquid nitrogen, bashed apart with a hammer
1 boy blown apart by a bomb
1 female blown apart by a bomb
1 girl blown apart by a bomb
2 victims blown apart by a bomb
1 female slaughtered to death with a chainsaw
1 male bisected with a chainsaw
1 male found headless, gutted and nailed to a wall
1 male head seen inside a cage, eaten by rats
1 female gets a tube shoved down her throat and force fed with live rats, throat cut with a knife
1 female gets a sword to the mouth, decapitated
Total: 24

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Budapest's Bloody Basement: The Basement (2017)

The Basement (US/United Kingdom/Hungary, 2017)
Rating: *1/2
Starring: Caroline Boulton, Marina Gera, Zsolt Páll

After their house party got shut down by a noise complaint, a small assortment of international students staying at an apartment in Budapest, Hungary got bored enough to do a séance. As they do, a door wasn't closed right so their house cat slips out into the night, which the group eventually notice after their little spooky séance session. When they step out to start looking for the furry fella, they hear the cat meowing from inside an abandoned city basement so they opted to continue looking down there, only to find that the place is seemingly haunted by a crazed figure resembling a woman wearing a broken mannequin's face who wastes no time hunting them down.


So, yeah, everything horrifying that happened in this movie started because someone's pet cat snuck out and wandered into the titular underground basement. Worst pet rescue ever!

I will give this movie points for the claustrophobic set-pieces, a few good peppering of gore here and there, impressive for a mini-production, but its direction and execution clumsily clunks through what little story The Basement (2017) has to offer, which is basically just five people going around concrete tunnels and hallways while a freak in a mask chases them down. Any sort of intrigue or conflict here is reduced to a few characters bickering whether the killer chasing them is an actual demon or an underground-dwelling nutcase, all done through an exaggeratedly uneven tone and dubious personality shifts from its casts. It can get annoying. Tiresome. Weird, even. We do get decent-ish reveal to the killer's true nature at the near end but, after enduring all that terrible acting and line-reading, not to mention the lackluster plotting, does it even matter?


The Basement (2017)
is just forgettable. It does the most out of a small budget to make a little horror flick and I commend the attempt, but I'm not gonna pretend I have a swell time watching this worn-out wannabe spook-fest get further butchered by uninteresting victims-to-be. Skip it.

Bodycount:
1 male killed offscreen, blood spill seen
1 female dragged away, killed
1 male killed, blood splash seen
1 male found gutted, left for dead
1 female set ablaze
1 male had his throat sliced with a pickaxe
1 female brained dead with a brick
1 female gagged with a doll and strangled with a length of fairy lights
1 male hacked to death with a pickaxe
1 male doused in gasoline, set on fire
Total: 10