Bloody Axe Wound

Painfully awful movie with a totally misleading star rating. I am puzzled by this rating in fact. The '90s video rental store(necessary for the storyline it appears) precede the age of 99 percent of the actors within the film. I hear there is some nostalgia for this decade lately but it is certainly overshadowed by the hodgepodge of a storyline and/or screenplay. We have not walked out of a theater in many years but this one has surely earned the distinction.

The dad's makeup and the quality werewolf mask alone do not make a movie. The high school cast must also have been responsible for the ratings it received. Gen Z does it again it appears.

This movie is most easily described as your average teen slasher with a bit of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon mixed in. We follow Abbie Bladecut, the daughter of a local serial killer and slasher legend. After her father realizes he is getting older, he wants her to continue his legacy of killing innocent teenagers. However, the problem arises when she joins her local high school and is met with kindness and love from the other students. She even finds a potential love interest, which makes her mission to kill rather difficult.

The pitch sounds great, and the movie had immense potential to create something as unique as Behind the Mask. Unfortunately, that potential is not fulfilled, and the movie ends up feeling pretty generic given its premise. The characters are dull and not particularly interesting, and aside from the developing love interest, there isn't much for the audience to latch onto. Even the romance feels generic and disrupts the pacing by creating tonal inconsistencies within the narrative.

Instead of action and kills, we get boring conversations and a fairly predictable romantic subplot. The comedy rarely lands and is definitely not the film's strongest suit. However, the kills are decent and the gore is solid, which is arguably the most important aspect a straightforward slasher needs to deliver.

The movie ends up being enjoyable overall, but it's far from great or particularly engaging. Genre fans might still have a decent time, but with a premise like this, it could have been much more unique and entertaining. Sadly, it just ends up as another average horror release.

[5.3/10]

Bloody Axe Wound initially comes across as another subversively interesting slasher that aims to have fun with the rules of the sub-genre, but eventually becomes a wasted idea executed in a fun enough way to keep it watchable.

Acting is decent from the Bladecuts, with Billy Burke being an easy highlight of the movie as he handles the humour and the intensity to an impressively balanced degree as the fatherly killer Roger Bladecut. Moreover, Sari Arambulo is really fitting in the lead role of Abbie Bladecut; she is able to convey the struggles and aspirations to follow in her father's footsteps in a straight-faced and very comical way that is still funny but never comes across as silly or overacting. On a more technical note, the cinematography, lighting, and practical gore effects are all very well done. And the story itself starts out pretty strong, with an interestingly funny set up, and the balancing between the jokes and the killings is done to an effective degree.

However, that is also where it seems to be a point of struggle for the film. It can't consistently maintain its aforementioned balance, where the second act very much becomes a high school romance story that very nearly hijacks the main premise several times. The third act, in an attempt the balance the scales again, instead tips them entirely to being a straight up generic slasher flick with a strange and underwhelmingly unrewarding ending.

But it's biggest weakness is by far the world building, with several aspects and plot mechanisms left either unexplored or unexplained. Furthermore, the script can never decide how it works, and it leaves the audience with an utterly baffled sense of confusion as to how particular mechanisms drive the narrative.

Overall, it is funny enough to keep you entertained, but not interesting enough to stick with you and leave any kind of lasting impression.

This was a very silly movie that parodies slasher flicks that revolves around a slasher dad who has a family business in creates slasher films and owns a film rental store who is trying to groom his adopted daughter to rise up and take over the business and save it before it goes under. It was very campy and corny at times but some parts were entertaining and there was some kind of underlying message about breaking the status quo of being a typical slasher when you start letting your emotions run wild. For what it is, if you're into seeing a mock up flick that pokes fun at slasher flicks while showcasing what it would be like to be the kid of a Jason Voorhees like character then check this one out.

I went into this blind knowing nothing about it. The whole premise of this movie was something I had not exactly seen before. While I found it somewhat predictable, that had no effect on the joy of watching. I jump from movie to movie if they bore me and not only was I not bored, but I didn't pause the movie at any point as I wanted to see how this would play out. I would have liked to know more background on the main family, there was enough I guess but I want to know why the father is so sure of why these things need to happen. Was some other force a driving factor in what they do or is it just their own set of rules that they always follow to a T. Either way I think anyone will enjoy the watch.