Rating: **
Starring: L.C. Holt, Celeste Blandon, Jace Carson
In 1997, the Phantom Fun-World indoor theme park found itself in damning controversy when four staff and two responding police were brutally murdered, apparently by the owner's disturbed young son. The scandal was enough to shut the place down and left alone for a very long while until, that is, recently, under new ownership and a fresh start away from its dark past. With its grand reopening drawing near, troubled teen Andi gets herself a job at the park in order to provide for her 16-year-old brother Cole while their estranged mother sorts her own life out. Unbeknownst to her and the rest of the new hires, someone obsessed over the park's grim history and its Phantom mascot is paying their respect, depopulating Fun-World of its staff night by night with the seeming intention of keeping it closed forever...
Concept-wise, Phantom Fun-World (2023) has the very potential to be a fair enough throwback to Golden Age slashers with a plot that kinda resembles Friday The 13th (1980)'s only in a carnival-esque setting, peppered with decent practical gore effects and a few good stalk-and-stab antics towards the end as our survivors fight off a decent-looking killer with a unique mask. The problem rises from its obvious microbudget; the Fun-World itself is more of a glorified single-floor arcade that just happens to have bumper cars and a Merry-Go-Round than the exciting theme park it's advertised to be, thus failing to properly utilize a fun backdrop. Writing attempts a flair of the melodramatic for potential character development but it's so stinted yet forced that it's less engaging and more tedious to sit through, something the movie's range of hokey to amateur acting, nor its dubious audio quality hardly helps. In fact, there's an entire sequence here involving Andi's snarky bestfriend being attacked by The Phantom and the whole thing is shot like something out of Rob Zombie's own brand of horror, complete with slow-mo's and muted flashbacks of the victim being happy, just to show how devastating this is supposed to be. Would have been effective given that we get to know the character maybe a tad more than just 'that snarky friend", so the result is more eye-rolling than tear-jerking.
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| Actually, come to think of it, the resemblance is rather uncanny... |
Still, giving credit when credit is due, Phantom Fun-World (2023) at least made itself worthwhile whenever it focuses on the killings, may it be for the gnarly gore effects, the classy stab on your usual cat-and-mouse chase, or the unintentional hilarity of The Phantom's absurd durability. Friday The 13th (1980)'s Jason Ari Lehman is here in a fun cameo as the original owner of Phantom Fun-World, while The Phantom himself is played by L.C. Holt, who donned the Lamb Mask in the awesome home invasion slasher You're Next (2011), and he's certainly giving his all in his role here as another mute murderer.
Mediocre it may be, if you're not looking much for your horror viewing then Phantom Fun-World (2023) is serviceable enough for a low-budget slashing good time filled with blood, cheese and a good shot of a killer. Other than that, you can definitely do better...
Bodycount:
1 male hacked with an axe, eyes thumbed
1 male knifed in the head
1 male knifed to death
1 male had his jaw torn off
4 males murdered with a knife (flashback)
1 male had his throat cut with a knife (flashback)
1 male knifed to death (flashback)
1 male knifed in the neck
1 female beaten to death against a wall
1 male knifed to death (flashback)
1 female dies from multiple knife stabbings
1 male beaten to death with a police baton
1 male knifed to death
Total: 16
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| "ME NO DUM-DUM, YOU DUM-DUM! You bring me gum-gum?" |
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