Blow The Whistle, Baby! Here We Go!: Whistle (2025)

Whistle (2025)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Dafne Keen, Sophie Nélisse, Sky Yang

This should have been the kind of movie that'll win me over; a supernatural slasher revolving around the Ehecachichtli, also known as the Aztec death whistle, an instrument formerly used by the Mexica people to scare off foes as the noise it makes resemble either wind or, most macabre, a high-pitched scream. Have that badassery incorporated into an otherworldly massacre done in your classic teen-kill plot and this title could have been an interesting bodycounter. But regrettably, Whistle (2025) hardly bothered with what it presents.

At a Pellington high school basketball game, star player Mason is terrifyingly distracted by visions of a charred figure slowly approaching him. Despite this, he wins the match and, immediately afterwards, seemingly ends whatever haunting that's going on by destroying an artifact from his locker: the Aztec death whistle. This, unfortunately for the kid, didn't stop the charred man from finally catching up to him, burning Mason alive in the school showers as everybody else occupying it watch in horror. 

Six months later, recovering drug addict Chrys leaves Chicago to attend Pellington following her father's death, hoping for a fresh start to her life post-rehab. She's living in with her cousin Rel, who also happens to be a student there, and the two gets into a lick of trouble when Dean, one of the jocks, learns that Chrys is now using Mason's locker, a matter that he deems disrespectful to his late friend. The altercation escalates to the basketball player getting his balls kneed, a fight that Dean's girlfriend Grace and a do-gooder bystander Ellie tried stopping. However, a schoolteacher (played by Shaun of the Dead (2004)'s Nick Frost in what's basically a glorified cameo) witness the fight and issues all five teens to detention.

Things further go from frustrating to strange as, inside her locker, Chrys finds the Aztec death whistle, whole once more. Thinking it belongs to Mason, she brings it along to detention after school, where the schoolteacher decides to hold on to it as school property. Sellable school property. It ain't long, though, before this fella gets his comeuppance as, after ending detention early to get rid of the kids, he blows into the whistle to see if the antique still works, unknowingly summoning a gaunt balding figure that proceeds to murder him through what appears to be an accelerated sickness. 

Having forgotten a comic book, Rel returns to the classroom and spots the whistle all on its own. He pockets it because, well, it's cool, and he brings the damn thing along to a group meeting/party at Grace's house where they're supposed to be working on an assignment. As you expect, the skully trinket gets blown into again, its noise now heard by Chrys, Rel, Dean, Grace and Ellie. 

Eerily mangled, aging and/or slaughtered visages of themselves begin to terrorize the main casts then, a ghoulish predicament that Chrys and Ellie readily accept as the doing of the cursed whistle after some slight research, and a quick visit to Mason's home where his Grandmother Ivy lore dumps what the thing does; as it turns out, hearing the whistle's cry causes one's future death to arrive sooner in the form of a shambling doppelganger, which is frankly the movie's strongest element. 

We see a good array of these deathly doubles ranging from brittle seniors running amuck, to horrifying flesh sacks loosely held together by broken bones, all of them stalking and chasing their victims one by one. A good deal of make-up and CG work were done for their scenes, leading to gruesomely creative deaths that earn this movie it's R-rating with all the blood and gore in display. Sadly, these are the only positives I can see from Whistle (2025) as everything else is your run-in-the-mill cursed object spiel done in the barest of bones and borrowed points.

Basically, the writing is cheap with expositions and one-note characterizations, following a simple paint-by-number direction of kids fucking around and finding out, then trying to survive and mostly failing. Cliches upon cliches are tiresomely ever present as, of course, the one person who knows what's going on fails to explain how to stop it the first time they're asked, only to hint it later when all that's left are two and a half of the casts. But even then, Whistle (2025) fails to be impressive with its surprises since the way to stop this curse is ripped off from Final Destination 2 (2003), Final Destination 5 (2011) and The Evil Dead (2013), just done more complicatedly and dramatically. Wouldn't you know it, too, the film just has to end with a mid-credit scene that suggests a potential sequel. Yeah, sure. Smile 2 (2024) you are not, movie. 

Underwhelming. Just underwhelming. Whistle (2025) may have delivered the gory goods, but the painfully generic story drags everything else down to a forgettable slop. 

Bodycount:

1 male set ablaze

1 male suffers through an accelerated cancer

1 female aged to death

1 female passed away from cancer

1 male mangled

1 male minced and shredded into pieces

1 male gets a gunshot wound, suffers from a water death

Total: 7

Blood Freaks and Spanked Cheeks: Evils of The Night (1985)

Evils of The Night (1985)

Rating: **

Starring: Neville Brand, Aldo Ray, Tina Louise

A group of space aliens resembling voluptuous women in short skirts (and old John Carradine in a silver jogging suit) arrive on Earth to harvest and experiment on the youthful blood of horny teenagers for a way to keep themselves alive, only to encounter dilemmas when it turns out that the nearby town is short on victims due to most of the teens driving off for Spring break, and those they were able to capture often end up dead thanks to the murderous tendencies of their two hired hillbilly goons. (Played by Neville Brand and Aldo Ray)

If this sounds like the plot of one of those drive-in cheapo flicks, or dime store movies often shown in public domain, that ought to show what to expect from this mess of a film, honestly. Evils of The Night (1985) is a cauldron concoction of a cheese-fest combining low brow scifi plotting of very human-looking aliens in skimpy dresses and big hair yakking up technical space jargon and extraterrestrial quips to pass up what this movie considers as an intergalactic threat (of the small scale), with that of a very exploitative swing on your typical backwoods teen slasher, showcasing very spicy sex scenes that lingers long on screen and a victim group consisting of airer-than-airhead teens punctuated with outrageously cheesy dialogue and overly expressive acting. 

It's bad. Like, amazingly bad. So much so that I, frankly, sort of enjoyed this junk of a movie! The unapologetic cheesiness of its direction and production, down to its cheap laser effects and unabashed sleaze just works with the mad science craziness of space doctors with questionable morals roping in a pair of killer gas station hicks to kidnap sex-crazed teenagers for research. They justified this juxtapose with the aliens needing someone dumb enough to be bribed with gold coins to help out with their blood-draining science project, regardless of how uncontrollably brutal they can be, which is the kind of demented writing I could always go for whenever I'm in the mood for an entertainingly dumb movie.

That said, it is still a dumb movie. One with audio work and editing that are patchy, and, too, a lack of any real sympathetic characters as practically all of them are one-note stereotypes of screaming girls and their eye-candy boyfriends. The group of villains flair a tad better as low-rent 'space aliens' and violent townies, hamming up their scenes to ludicrous fancy whenever they appear, something to consider since the story is as thin as a single sheet of paper. Heck, you can honestly tell with the way the story kinda just ends with the operation halting due to the aliens having a deadline for these blood experiments and somehow this includes one more laser death. And speaking of, for a slasher, there really isn't much gore to speak of until the last thirty minutes, so those expecting a slaughterfest may need to test their patience.

It's not going to be everyone's ham and cheese treat. In fact, even if you are hungering for a really feisty cheddar and smoky meat-to-meat minute, Evils of The Night (1985) is still the odd one out for how unconventional it is as both a slasher and a sci-fright flick. But if you don't mind a bit of an obscurity, then is one title you could try seeking out. 

Bodycount:

1 male garroted

1 female dies during an operation

1 male shot dead with a laser

1 male repeatedly beaten with a wooden beam, later dies during an operation

1 male brained with a tire iron

1 female mentioned drowned

1 female beaten to death with a blanket filled with glass containers

1 female disemboweled with a power drill

1 male crushed by an automotive hoist

1 female hacked apart with an axe

1 male shot with a laser, bled to death

Total: 11

Death's A Dance, Make It A Prom!: Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)

Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025)
Rating: ****
Starring: India Fowler, Suzanna Son, Fina Strazza

The 2021 Fear Street trilogy is, without a doubt, one of the more unique movie events made for the slasher sub-genre. It's practically one five-and-a-half-hour-long film inspired by R.L. Stine's young adult book series of the same name, divided into three parts, each to be played a week from one another. Though each entry has their own strengths and weaknesses, resulting to varying qualities per film, the all-in-all result is still a unique and adventurous blend of supernatural terror, generational trauma and gory slasher action.

Now, the franchise returns with a standalone title set in the same movie universe, this time an adaptation of Stine's book The Prom Queen, done gorier, messier and reeking of pure 80s nostalgia. 

It's 1988 and the small town of Shadyside is getting ready to celebrate one of the few good things to look forward to every year, the high school senior prom and the race for the Prom Queen crown! For this round, the candidates are mostly within the same clique known as The Wolf Pack, led by pompous queen bee Tiffany Falconer. She and her three cohorts are up against street-smart weed dealer Christie, who's just doing it so she can annoy Tiffany, and Lori Granger, the underdog candidate whose mother is rumored to have murdered Lori's father during her own prom many years ago. For Lori, to be crowned Prom Queen is a chance to represent the sunnier side of Shadyside, to break the town's gloomy reputation of being the breeding place of homicidal serial killers and masked psychos, thus hopefully freeing her and her mother from being looked down upon as tragic cases. 

On Lori's side is her horror geek bestie, Megan, rooting from the sides as she go about trying to ruin the Wolf Pack's morale by pranking them with horror effects and magic, from self-dismemberment via prop hand, to life-like replica of Tiffany's head left curiously floating in a punch bowl. However, Megan soon finds herself and Lori are in a horror movie of their own: someone in a red rain slicker and masked-up like a ghoul is out cutting down the competition, hacking up the prom queen candidates and, too, pretty much anybody else who happens to be in their way with an axe. By the end of the night, will there be anyone left alive to be crowned Prom Queen?

A more back-to-basics entry from a film franchise centered around witch curses and maniacs that can regenerate from demonic goo, Prom Queen (2025) is your classic high school bodycounter flick mixing in girl drama with good old-fashioned hack 'n slash, ala Heathers (1988) crossed with Prom Night (1980). Admittedly, this is a direction that isn't going to garner a lot of favorable opinions after the trilogy's more unique swing at the slasher sub-genre, but for those who are not in an overly demanding mood and simply want to watch a dead teenager film for the fun of watching a dead teenager film, this movie serves!

Prom Queen (2025) unfolds quite nicely as we breeze through its high school dramatics and be rewarded for sticking through the scenes with a decent kill or two. Maybe even a dance-off! Yes, the paint-by-number approach is still riddled with slasher tropes like couples repeatedly sneaking away from the party to hook up, only to get a knife buried into a head or being relieved of their limbs with an axe, but the movie isn't one to shy away from doing something shocking and nasty whenever it can to keep everyone on their toes, mainly offing some likable characters, as well as having a madman publicly go after a victim through a crowd while the Prom Queen coronation is happening. The deaths are also a splashy bunch, a real showcase of blood and guts here with a brutal buzzsaw to the face and a savage axe double-murder being among the better examples! 

The throwback aesthetics is workable enough; the snappy soundtrack full of 80s mood classics and modern retrowave is a good hear, plus the fashion sense and lingo here do strike a nostalgic nerve, quite passable attempts for a late-80s slasher tribute such as this. By the near end of the film, we're treated with a twisty set of reveals that, while isn't exactly new or surprising, it still pairs pretty well with the bonkers motivation the killer have for massacring teenagers during prom. It's the kind of crazy slasher finale we've grown to love and I'm all for it! 

Overall, Fear Street: Prom Queen (2025) may not win every horror-living hearts out there, but for those who loves a gruesomely bloody teen slasher with the decent amount of nostalgic ham and craziness, this is a great movie to consider for your slasher viewings! Make it a date! 

Bodycount:

1 female hacked to death with an axe

1 female gutted

1 male had his hands lopped off with a paper guillotine, face smashed against a door

1 male had his face eviscerated with a buzzsaw

1 female startled unto a fusebox, electrocuted to death

1 female hacked on the head with a meat cleaver

1 male jabbed on the head with a knife

1 male found with a hammerclaw buried into his head

1 female had a leg lopped off with an axe, bled to death

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 female fell unto and impaled on a falcon statue

1 female fatally brained with a trophy, dies from her injury 

Total: 12

Psychometric Situations: Departing Seniors (2023)

Departing Seniors (2023)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, Yani Gellman, Ireon Roach

Tired of being on the receiving end of homophobic bullying, Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) wanted nothing more right now than just to graduate out of Springhurst High and move on with his life. Until then, he soldiers through the final days of high school, finding comfort from his spunky bestfriend Bianca (Ireon Roach) and a sympathetic English teacher Mr. Arda (Yani Gellman), as well as on the graceful chance of finally hanging out with new student he's been crushing on, William (Ryan Foreman). 

Javier's would-be fling, however, gets exploited by the bullying ringleaders, star student Ginny (Maisie Merlock) and her meathead jock boyfriend Trevor (Cameron Scott Roberts), faking an invite to lure Javier out to another round of harassment afterschool. Finally having enough, Javier lashes back and outs another bullying jock, Brad (Sasha Kuznetsov), as a closeted gay, bringing up romantic flairs that's been happening between them behind everyone's back. Outraged, the jocks chase Javier and accidentally knocks him unconscious after he get thrown down a flight of stairs.

Waking up later in a hospital, Javier discovers, much to his shock and initial horror, that he can now randomly see glimpses of the past or future of whoever he touches, or by touching objects that belong to them. Unsure what to make of this at first, Javier quickly learns that he may need to use his new clairvoyant abilities to save the very people that tormented him when a prowler in a stylized Greek theatre mask starts snuffing out the bullies, staging them as suicides. Can Javier convince his aggressors of the dangers in time? Or will they all fall victim to the blade of this mysterious killer?

Visions in slasher films isn't exactly a new party trick given the likes of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988), Fear (1990) or even the Final Destination movies already tormenting clairvoyants with killings to come, courtesy of a vicious murderer. Departing Seniors (2024) practically follows the same beat with Javier and Bianca racing against time to stop these deaths from happening and hopefully put an end to the killer's terror, only there's more happening around the slayings than the actual slayings itself. 

While Javier's ability to see visions is often given a comedic pass, with characters quirkily citing similar instances from various movies and TV plots, it also becomes a catalyst to the film's warmly emotional moments as it taps into the more vulnerable sides of the people surrounding Javier, this including his bullies who, through psychic foreshadowings and flashbacks, turns out to be surprisingly sympathetic despite their horrible behavior, having to deal with their own plights of insecurities and personal dilemmas which they hide behind an intimidating front. We get to see them mourn their losses and even try to better themselves, building a refreshingly solid cast to be cathartically killed off, but with the bulk of the plot centering on the drama, as well as the mystery behind who's doing away the bullies, Departing Seniors (2023) is light on the kill count and even lighter on the blood shed as the killer prefers to stage the murders as suicides to cover their tracks.

The film makes a good effort on twisting suspicions around with clever misdirection and plausible red herrings to keep the whodunnit angle fun and engaging, though with the casts so little, it's not too hard to eventually figure out who the culprit is. Even more so their motive behind the killings given the film's stance concerning bullying. The climactic confrontation is hammed-up, to say the least, with the killer breaking into angry monologues and one of the victims taking a little longer to realize how deep into trouble they are, going as far as chastising the villain for their threatening behavior. It's a passable finale with a few good fights and one that ends with the killer being arrested rather than killed, something you don't often see in a teen slasher.

It may not have the messiest bodycount, nor much of an exploitative edge, Departing Seniors (2023) still works as a slasher drama with a fun cast, a crisp production quality and the right amount of heartbreak and blood spill. Recommended for warm murder mystery afternoons!

Bodycount:

1 male had his wrists slashed with a hunting knife, drowned in a pool

1 male hanged with a fire hose

1 male beaten against a steering wheel, pushed off a building

Total: 3

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

The Last Ride of El Maestro: Cinco De Mayo (2013)

Cinco De Mayo (2013)

Rating: ***

Starring: Anthony Iava To'omata, Lindsay Amaral, Spencer Reza

Labeled as a menace to their little town, a humble and soft-spoken college professor of Mexican heritage gets fired from his teaching position and gets convinced by the faculty counselor that he has "Aztec blood" brewing inside him, waiting to explode into carnal violence when enough gets enough. After further threatened by overly racist neighbors and mocked by his students for trying to teach the importance of Mexican cultural heritage, this professor has one more lesson to teach this Cinco De Mayo and all those who have treated the Hispanic population unjustly will learn it in blood.

Padded with an 80s-style late night movie hostess telling us about the movie we're about to watch, as well as a faux trailer about a dance group going against a zombie apocalypse, Cinco De Mayo (2013) is a small movie done with an even smaller budget, but with big aspirations and ideas! Its relatively simple plot of a quite man finally snapping into violence is a tale as old as time, but the racial tone and social commentary keep things interesting, especially when our main character and soon-to-be masked slasher isn't exactly the worse person to crawl out of the story, making his killing spree all the more fun to watch.

For a micro-budget slasher, acting is mostly okay and some of the score actually fits the kind of tale of terror presented here, not to mention the direction's perfectly paced and the kill effects are pretty good considering the minuscule funds. It does, however, lack style in cinematography with too many open spaces and lightning problems, its audio occasionally clips and the editing tries hard to replicate the old scuffed-up Grindhouse feel on a budget, only to come off as distracting. These are common pitfalls you would expect from a do-it-yourself passion project and there's no doubt that this will not win a lot of people over, but if you can overlook the rough edges and patchwork, the film can be a real guilty pleasure.

Honestly, Cinco De Mayo (2013) is an alright movie. It's nothing new for a holiday slasher and it's definitely within the lower spectrum of what can be considered as quality work, but it has effort and an enjoyable indie touch. Entertaining enough to check out!

Bodycount:

1 male shot

1 male stabbed in the chest with a hunting knife

1 male had his face shredded with a weed whacker

1 male hanged on a noose, beaten dead with a baseball bat

1 male gets a miniature flag to the eye, stabbed to death with a hunting knife

1 male stabbed in the neck with a hunting knife

1 male decapitated with a sword

1 male ran through the back with a sword, impaled in the mouth with a flag

Total: 8

Political Threatre: Founders Day (2023)

Founders Day (2023)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Naomi Grace, Devin Druid, William Russ

When it comes to politics, I don't really give a damn; the whole idea bores me and, honestly, I find it rather funny that a lot of people lose themselves over what's basically a popularity contest fueled by a big mess of shady tactics and petty arguments about which way is the correct way to rule over the masses. It's all a silly game by the end of it, with the people sitting in the high chair's bound of muck it up at some point. 

That being said, isn't it ironic that I find a slasher centered around a small town election rather fun?

In the New England town of Fairwood, a race for public office between Mayor Blair Gladwell's platform of “consistency” against Harold Faulkner's campaign of “change” have the whole community heated and going for each other's throats, completely unaware that this contest would soon be shaken to its core; a mysterious masked figure in political robes and a blood red theater mask has decided to make the best of all of this political chaos and starts a killing spree targeting the teenage populous. With some of the victims being the two mayor candidates' children, an uproar of suspicions and accusations against both parties gets thrown all over, further sending the town into a crazed frenzy and paranoia as locals are left unsure of who to trust. 

Now, I'll admit that Founders Day (2023)'s so-called political satire is a real misfired aim as the supposed politics isn't anywhere as deep or thought-provoking as the movie's serious tone plays it out to be; the direction undoubtedly tries to put more weight on the drama happening around the campaign, but it roughly clashes against its story and script which both lean heavily on poking fun at the absurdity around political divide. There's no teeth in its statements regarding current event politics and it all simply boils down to an overly simplified idea that scummy politicians and political rage are bad, which definitely will feel underwhelming for those expecting the same cunningness towards the subject as that of, let's say, The Purge movies or even 2020's horror thriller, The Hunt. 

Personally, however, I couldn't be happier that this little bodycounter isn't bogged down by all that riff-raff seeing we already have enough noise to go through with Founders Day (2023)'s disjointed yet serviceable whodunnit slasher plot. Curiously, there's no true main character to speak of here as the movie practically juggles its attention from one focus group to another, leaving many, if not all characterization here mostly one-note. Our implied lead girl Allison Chambers, for example, who's going through the troubles of leaving town for a better future, as well as losing her girlfriend from a seemingly politically-motivated murder, is simply presented here moping around her loss and doesn't become the center of attention until the film's climax wherein she and a local bad boy start snooping around to figure out what really going on with these murders. It's rather unconventional, but it does keep the story on its toes as it practically implies that anybody can be murdered just as much as anyone can be the killer.

In fact, the whodunnit aspect of this movie is what really sold it for me as just when you thought things got figured out and you know where it's all headed, they kill off a character to throw a wrench on the cogs and have us starting over from scratch. It's frustrating, yes, but it also got me feeling challenged and engaged, with a final act that embraces the silliness of over-explaining convoluted plans with an overly basic motivation. Do they really need to kill off those people for their goal? Nope. Is it anti-climactic? Most people will agree, yes. Is it nonsensically fun? If you welcome its absurdity, I say yes! It can work! Besides, Founders Day (2023)'s road is paved with awesome kills and a cool-looking killer. Sometimes it pays to be a simple slasher fan, especially one who appreciates a level of cheese and a good homage to the early 90s gimmicky killers, something our killer, The Founder, delivers with their memorable presence highlighted with a distorted stage mask, a powdered wig and a gavel customized with a hidden blade. The fella is simple by design, yet so striking! (Pun intended)

Overall, I find Founders Day (2023) enjoyable more as a slasher that just happens to have a political slant to it, rather than a straight-on political horror flick. It's far from perfect, stumbling down a step or two with what it's initially trying to achieve in satire, but the end results still have a good dose of splattery fun time and a twisty murder mystery! 

Bodycount:

1 female beaten, throat cut with a bladed gavel

1 male beaten to death with a scale

1 female stabbed in the head with a bladed gavel

1 male stabbed in the gut with a broken wood post

1 female gets a fountain pen to the throat, repeatedly stabbed with a sign post

1 male gets a bladed gavel to the chest, face slashed and stabbed with a letter opener

1 female killed with a bladed gavel

1 male shot

1 female stabbed on the throat with a bladed gavel

Total: 9

#RUSHSLOTH: Slotherhouse (2023)

Slotherhouse (2023)

Rating: ***

Starring: Lisa Ambalavanar, Sydney Craven, Andrew Horton

We have slasher films featuring grizzly bears (i.e. Grizzly Park (2008)), wolves (i.e. Wolfen (1981)) and, heck, even sharks (i.e. Shark Night (2013)). Now, we welcome the newest addition to the killer animal sub-genre, one that is prowled by a deadly, dangerous, despicable, dastardly denizen of the Nicaraguan Jungle: a baby sloth.

Obsessed with becoming the next Sigma Lambda Theta sorority president, Emily (Lisa Ambalavanar) would soon find herself talking to a friendly fella at a mall who claims to be selling a variety of pets, including exotic ones, suggesting that she should get herself a unique furry friend to boost her image and impress her sorority sisters. Unbeknownst to her, the guy is actually an animal trafficker, one who recently poached a baby sloth straight out of her home and would have the worst of luck when said sloth turns out to be psychotic. Very psychotic. Murderous, even. And yet, when Emily arrives to pick up the sloth, blissfully unaware of the freshly mutilated poacher, the two appear to have formed a bond and the bouncy sorority senior gets a big shot of popularity when she suggests making her new sloth, Alpha, the mascot of their house.

Thus the race to campus house presidency begins, with Emily butting heads against resident mean girl Brianna (Sydney Craven) and Alpha surprisingly adapting well to her new home, mastering mobile phones and laptops, hanging out with friends and even helping out Emily with her goal of winning the election. Through murders. Lots of murders. So much so that by the end of it all, the girls of Sigma Lambda Theta will have no choice but to fight back and survive Alpha's Slotherhouse~!

If you're gonna sit and watch Slotherhouse (2023) expecting deeply complex characters, underlying messages of the evils of animal poaching and heart-stopping intensity in its murders, I say you're off your rockers, luv! It's a campus slasher with a baby sloth for a killer, it's as silly as it sounds and when approached with a leap of faith and a popcorn B-flick mindset, it's surprisingly good! 

The premise is simply fun for its honest ridiculousness, mixing the dumb hilarity of a killer sloth situation with the known slasher trope of sorority girls-in-peril well enough to make the absurd story work as a comical twist on your usual teen bodycounter and animals-gone-bad carnage. Its writing has a tongue firmly pressed in a cheek and the characters are an okay bunch despite lingering near the typical stereotypes of goody girls and queen bitches, with a notable few managing to deliver some genuine quirk and personality within the ensemble, courtesy of a quippy script and pretty alright acting for a B-grade production. The pacing does hobble a bit whenever the story decides to focus on the sorority girl drama and college life capers, though this is balanced and remedied with the unapologetically gimmicky yet fun shlock that is Alpha's misadventures of mischief, murder and mayhem!

For sure, the diminutive sloth is undoubtedly the highlight of Slotherhouse (2023) as not only does the critter act less like an actual animal and more of an anthropomorphized fuzzy menace capable of doing a real number on the kill count, giving her a tad more character and a further reason for this whole thing to be amusingly ludicrous, but she also earns the film a score of points for taking the time to bring the slasher sloth to life via practical puppet effects. The prop looks stuffy, yes, but it adds an old school flavor to its already nonsensical charm and dish out a lot of outrageous visuals to boot, especially during the times Alpha unleashes her inner psycho at just about anyone she comes across in the Sigma Lambda Theta house. A lot of cheekiness is to be expected around these killing sprees in turn, though I do wish we got a little bit more onscreen slaughter to go along with it as a good run of the violence was done mostly off-screen.

Completely looney in the best and most charming ways, Slotherhouse (2023) is a popcorn flick with the enthusiasm of being so bad, it's good. Bewildering yet entertaining under the right mood, this movie can be a real blast of a watch!

Bodycount:

1 male mauled, clawed to death

1 female had her throat clawed out

1 female stuffed inside a sleeping bag, pushed off a bridge

1 female killed offscreen

1 female seen slaughtered

1 female beaten with a hair straightener

1 female killed, later seen with a Glasgow smile

1 female attacked, killed offscreen

1 female killed offscreen, later seen with a clawed neck

1 female killed with a mesh net ball

7 females electrocuted in a shower room with a live wire

1 female mauled to death

1 female dragged away, killed

1 female got clawed through the gut

Total: 20

Bloody Ends Before New Beginnings: Time's Up (2022)

Time's Up (2022)

Rating: **

Starring: Damian Maffei, Hannah Fierman, L.C. Holt

On a general occasion, whenever a slasher flick sets itself around the theme of school bullying, it's often within the idea of brutally snuffing out those who did the bullying as presented by movies like Evilspeak (1981), Slaughter High (1986) and Tormented (2009). In Time's Up (2022), however, it appears the kill count will be focusing on the people who could have prevented the bullying, as in the school staff from the principal to the guidance counselor, from the theater teacher to the gym coach. A novel angle, but will the approach be just as good?

It's New Year's Eve and the faculty members of Pine Falls Highschool are celebrating the countdown at a get-together, all the while trying to get behind a recent tragedy wherein a student committed suicide after so much bullying and heartbreak, an incident that tainted the school's reputation considerably. Easier said than done when someone dressed up as "Father Time" is making sure those responsible for the death will pay in blood, thus forcing these fine folks to a game of scavenger hunt that night and should they refuse to partake, lives will be taken. 

Time's Up (2022) definitely has a something to say about a school's role on their students' well-being and it does so by working in small scenes of drama involving the bullied teen and his interactions with the staff members. The drawback from this is that the acting and writing are questionable enough to be distracting, so the effectiveness of the story's depth is mostly loss and often hinders with the flow of the plot. It also doesn't help that there isn't that many likeable characters here and those who could've been interesting have barely anything to do except be played as ploys for the killer's grand scheme of revenge. Quite a shame, really, since the story does have the ambitious potential to be good, engaging even, if only the execution is anywhere competently handled.

The only good things to come out of Time's Up (2022) are the kills being done in worthwhile practical effects, with the few extreme slayings really delivering the gore, and the killer's "Father Time" get-up looking rather creepily good that I kinda wish we see more of the maniac in action while donning it. There's also a scene in the last act where an arsehole character bites the big one in the most satisfyingly brutal way, but apart from that, the film could have use some extra polishing to smoothen out its small production bumps.  

Decent enough for a quick watch, but I can't picture myself coming back to this one as an annual treat.

Bodycount:

1 male shot through the mouth

1 male gets a hammer claw to the head

1 male seen dying from a throat cut

1 male found murdered with their face carved

1 female slashed in half with a scythe

1 male succumbs to a heart attack

1 female had her throat cut with a knife

1 male found murdered

1 female stabbed with a knife, later found decapitated

1 female found with rail spikes ran into her eyes

1 male found murdered, body wrapped in plastic

1 male gets a knife stabbed into the back of his neck

1 male stabbed in the eye with his own fractured bone

1 female brained with a cinder block

Total: 14

Breaking The Breakfast Clubs: Study Hell (2007) and Getting Schooled (2017) Double Bill Review

If I had a nickel for every time we get a slasher movie about combat shocked army veterans-turned-terror teachers losing it on problem students and going mad with murder, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice! By different writers and directors!

Study Hell (Canada, 2007)

Rating: **

Starring: Lindsay Dell, Brian Austin Jr., Stephen McDougall

Donald Keller (Stephen McDougall) is a teacher with issues; he doesn't appear to be that motivated to teach, a lot of the other staff is creeped out by him, he once showed up in a pep rally drunk and, oh, he appears to be suffering from PTSD after witnessing the horrors of the Vietnam war as a Black-Ops army captain! But the school principal he works under is willing to give him another chance to better himself and it just so happens there's a handful of troublemakers attending afterschool detention who needs a teacher to keep an eye out on them. 

The wannabe-Breakfast Club gets a small taste of Keller's overly strict disciplining as he orders them to write an essay as to why they deserve their punishment while he takes care of some personal matters, though what the gang doesn't know is that their night's about to become deadly when the school janitor decided to confront Keller about a wrongfully accused man and the massacre of an entire cheerleading team that the teacher may have been involved in. This snaps Keller's already fragile psyche, sending him down to a murderous streak as he now sees everyone who defies him as enemy combatants punishable by death!

This being a shot-on-video production, it comes to almost no surprise that Study Hell (2007) has all the trademarks of a low budget do-it-yourself horror film; the casts juggle from underacting to overacting their roles and the direction tries too hard to build its characters for depth that it occasionally winds down to drag out an insipid sentimental scene or two, only to succeed very little for how forced it all feels, as well as how low-grade cheesy the scripting it is. (John Hughes, writer Jeff McArthur ain't)  Cinematography is done through a cheap camera with little to no regards on lighting or style and the lack of editing in its audio means it hardly syncs, so the volume fluctuates from loud to low and back time to time. 

There is no denying that this here is a rubbish film, a bottom scrap from a barrel of terrible shlock, but frankly, it's not without its good points; I do like the idea of Study Hell (2007)'s concept of a madman teacher going psycho on the high school brat pack, forcing these misfits to band together in order to survive. It's a plot that has great horror potential and this movie could've done a well enough job on that front if only the execution had more effort put into it. Still, its amateurish cheesiness at least got me chuckling as much as I am groaning from its questionable production values, especially on how over-the-top our villain is once he goes into full post-war trauma triggered and dishing out dumb quirky one-liners. If only the murders were anywhere interesting, though, as the budget restrains limited a good dose of the killings to be done offcamera and those that happened onscreen barely showed any form of creativity or thrill to them. (Save, maybe, one involving a locker rigged with projecting daggers?) By the hour mark, most of the casts are dead and we're left with our final girl and final boy wandering around air vents and secret tunnels trying to find a way out, only to end up fending off Mr. Keller from one awkwardly staged fight choreography to the next, which is nothing but bad yet hilarious popcorn moments! 

Study Hell (2007) is a difficult film to defend at the end. There's just too much from it missing to be considered a workable movie, but the corny results and the unintentional hilarity earned the pic a bit of a soft spot from me so I cannot completely diss it. If you like bad slashers (like, really REALLY like them), or if you are simply curious to see how much of a train wreck this bodycounter is for yourself, then I say give it at least a go. But if you think you could do better then, yes, you could certainly do better. Way better.

Bodycount:

9 females found slaughtered

1 female found slaughtered, body stuffed in a locker

1 female stabbed in the mouth with a pair of scissors

1 male hanged with a stage curtain's pulley rope

1 female stabbed in the back with an ice pick

1 male beaten, had his head repeatedly crushed with a door

2 males seen dead in a battlefield (flashback)

1 male shot through the neck with an arrow

1 female had her face mutilated by rigged daggers

1 male dragged away, killed offscreen

2 males seen dead in a battlefield (flashback)

1 male killed, method unknown

Total: 22

~~~

Getting Schooled (2017)

Rating: ***

Starring: Mayra Leal, Tom Long, Roland Ruiz

It's the 20th of April, 1983; troubled outcast Julie, cheerleader princess Hillary, hooligan Rusty, meathead jock Mike and bespectacled nerdette Shelley find themselves spending their Saturday in detention for various misconducts and their wheelchair-bound monitor Mr. Roker is not too pleased babysitting these delinquents. Everybody is just dying to get out and spend the weekend anywhere than an empty classroom, but this little afterschool confinement would become a fight for survival when, after a projector accidentally falls on Mr. Roker, a head trauma triggers the teacher's PTSD from his days as a Black Ops unit and is now under the delusion that the kids are trying to kill him, so he's hellbent on killing them first.

Trapped in a locked empty school with a murderous paraplegic Vietnam vet skilled and strong enough to take them down one by one, the motely crew have no choice but to work together in order to live through Mr. Roker's deadly war games, as well as find a way to kill off the maddened teacher before he ends them all!

Getting Schooled (2017) is basically the melting pot mess you would get when one would outfit John Hughes' coming-of-age teen dramedy The Breakfast Club (1985) with the sensibilities of a low-budget B-grade throwback to 80s slasher flicks. It's filled with the common clichés and trappings of a bad bodycounter pic, mainly subpar acting and sub-standard writing resulting to caricature characters and tonal shifts juggling between being funny and emotional, though the direction do feel like it knows the absurdity of the story, occasionally willing to let loose on being silly for the giggles while squeezing in some bit of hammy drama in an attempt to give the movie a bit of weight. It doesn't always work, of course, but the courtesy of being entertainingly cheesy do help lessen the corny blows, not to mention the daringness of the plot to go into mean-spirited territories when it's called for.

Frankly, they have an interesting angle here when it comes to the slasher elements; it's not very often we get physically handicapped killers in the sub-genre (though not for the lack of trying as seen with titles like Hellroller (1992) or Highwaymen (2004)) and Mr. Roker surprisingly does a pretty good job being a real menace on four wheels, sadistically enjoying torturing his victims before slaughtering them all under the trauma of post-war combat. He is terrifyingly resilient and tough enough to out-grapple those who tried to brawl with him, often resulting to refreshingly graphic kills that made good use of the budget to dish out gory splatter and bloody dismemberments through sloppy practical effects, as well as gruesome make-up work for the aftermath bodies from the movie's few offscreen slayings. 

Production-wise, Getting Schooled (2017) is far from the most polished indie slasher, but it plays nice with its camera work, giving us a good bunch of expressively creative shots and lighting for both its horror and comedic angles. Costume and design do lean heavily on the stereotypical and cartoony, making the throwback aesthetics sort of a miss unless you look at it with a joking eye. Pacing does hobble, especially whenever the movie decides to slow down for the sake of giving its characters a moment to bond cheesily or spew pointless monologues, but the film's last act sort of makes up for it as the comedic elements were almost dropped in favor of grounding how much of an actual threat Mr. Roker has become now that he nearly killed off everybody. (Including Ron Jeremy in an extended cameo as a sleazy school janitor)

As clunky as it is as a cheesy slasher riff, Getting Schooled (2017) can be a fair watch if you're not demanding a lot from it, nor try making too much sense out of the whole deal. (I mean, for one, had it ever occurred to these kids to try hurting Roker with long-ranged weapons seeing, you know, he's on a chair?) It's good enough for laugh or two and its splatter-rich kills are a welcome sight, so I'll give this deadly detention a passing grade of 'B', for B-flick.

Bodycount:

1 female had her head repeatedly crushed with a radio

1 male stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver, fed with acid

1 male had a hand chopped off with a paper guillotine, later found slaughtered

1 male ran through and eviscerated with a wood saw

1 female found disemboweled and her eyes gouged

1 male skewered through the neck with a broken flag pole

1 female decapitated with a dropped sign

1 male dropped from a building, head splattered open

Total: 8

The Campus Halloween Rampage Massacre: Primal Rage (1988)

Primal Rage (Italy, 1988)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Patrick Lowe, Cheryl Arutt, Sarah Buxton

Taking more interest in covering leisurely school events and saving lovely girls from getting their cars towed, university journalist Sam (Patrick Lowe) have his fellow reporter and friend Duffy (Mitch Watson) tackle on an assignment concerning a possible animal abuse case. Unbeknownst to the two, said animal abuse is actually a part of a secret experiment on curing degenerative brain conditions handled by one Dr. Ethridge (Bo Svenson), though the endeavor is threatened to be cut off financially when supervising investors point out its lack of progressive results after watching an experimented baboon going nutzoid.

That night, Duffy breaks into Dr. Ethridge's lab to take pictures of all the inhumane treatments happening behind its closed doors and frees the experimented baboon. The primate, unfortunately, is carrying an "infectious rage" as a result from all that medical poking and prodding, thus spreading its sickness to Duffy through a scratch before the monkey gets killed off by a responding campus cop car, running it down by accident.

Over time, Duffy starts to feel ill but pushes himself to tough it out when Sam invites him to a double date with two female students he befriended, Lauren (Cheryl Arutt) and Debbie (Sarah Buxton). The night mostly went swimmingly with Sam and Lauren getting romantic with one another on the dance floor, while Duffy protects Debbie from an aggressive campus horndog who started to get too forward to the gal. Trouble comes spreading, though, when Duffy starts to act erratically and scratches his date while they were making out, thus starting the outbreak of "rage" across campus, building up to a trio of degenerates going full slasher maniacs at the university's rather impressive Halloween bash.

An outbreak horror film with a handful of zombie and slasher film tropes mingled in within the chaos of its story, Primal Rage (1988) is a gruesomely enjoyable melting pot of horror sub-genres done on a generous enough budget and a tad more cheddar in its execution, far from great cinema but dripping with a sense of B-grade badness that screams a riot of a good time! Its script oozes with laughably odd writing, its direction filled with crazy scenes of rabid terror and there's an aggressive amount of late-80s aesthetic, it shouldn't have work as well as it does, but the adorable chemistry from its likeable main casts and the way the easy-to-digest plot fooled around with our expectations makes the film a worthwhile spectacle of hammy romps and contagion horror.

Despite being a 14-year forerunner to Danny Boyle's 'rage zombie' movie 28 Days Later (2002), it's intriguing to note that in spite of the large cast, the outbreak only get to spread on a handful of victims and, by the end of the film, all of the them were killed off which pretty much meant the threat of the virus died along with the infected. No, the focus of the viral scare here was more on the body horror aspect of the infection (with gnarly make-up effects by Carlo Rambaldi, who did movies like A Bay of Blood (1971) and that 1976 remake of King Kong!), which relatively takes a while before the infected starts to drool black sludge, literally pop a vessel or start shrieking like an angry monkey on steroids. It's also interesting to point out that not a lot of the infected's victims get to live long enough to become infected themselves, and the trio of gang-rapists who eventually becomes this movie's penultimate bad guys doesn't even show the same kind of primal rage as of the others, instead acting more like bloodthirsty psychos who coordinate their attacks and take extra pleasure on their killings. So those expecting more of a zombie bash may want to look elsewhere, but slasher fans will definitely get something a tad unique from this run.

The contamination nightmare eventually leads to the movie's best part, a last act taking place in a Halloween ball where all the students attending don tons of frightening, comical and inspired costumes in the midst of the fancy dresses and typical get-ups. Like, for real, there are so much surreal and quirky costumes here, from a lady who's wearing an entire nostril as a mask to another whose entire gaunt face splits open via motor revealing a spooky skull, all dancing while the live band sings an earworm of a song, 'Say The Word' by The Facade Band, which I'm pretty sure is this movie's theme. Entertainingly, a few of these costumes were utilized by the killers in their murder spree, with one wearing a three-headed mask with taps for each of the noses getting the life crushed out of them, blood spilling out said taps in great grisly detail! Our do-gooders eventually steps in to stop the (mostly ignored) chaos, setting up a classic cat-and-mouse stalking as our maniacs, fittingly dressed up as grim reapers with red blinking electric eyes, attempt to end our protagonists.

All in all, Primal Rage (1988) is far from a great example of a contamination horror flick but it’s a genuinely fun one for its novel plotting, positively fantastic physical gore effects and make-ups and, too, a manageable amount of ham. It's an underrated mish-mash of ideas, reputable enough for a watch on a Halloween nights or any nights swimming in good booze and good friends!

Bodycount:

1 male brained to death against the wall

1 female found murdered

1 male mauled to death

1 male shot

1 male had his scalp torn off

1 male clawed to death

1 male had his throat ripped off

1 male hanged with a noose

1 male had his throat crushed

1 male ran through the head with a pole

1 male crushed inside retractable bleachers 

1 female beaten, later found mutilated

1 male decapitated with an axe

1 male tossed off a building, jaw impaled on a sprinkler head

Total: 14