Sexykiller, morirás por ella

This movie materializes the ultimate definition of a crowd-pleaser. I watched "Sexy Killer" in a practically sold-out theater at the Brussels International Fantasy Film Festival and the whole audience literally went out of their minds with enthusiasm and delirium. This is a pleasantly deranged, no-barrels-held, unscrupulous and 100% original miscellany of bloody horror and vulgar comedy; easily the most flamboyant movie of its type of the last 10 years or so. Many movies ambitiously try to mix horror and comedy ingredients but miserably fail, whereas "Sexy Killer" succeeds without seemingly too much efforts. I won't claim all gags and comical references are equally triumphant, but generally speaking this Spanish movie from director Miguel Martí ("Fin de Curso") and writer Paco Cabezas ("The Appeared") is a genuine winner and I hope it will find popularity and distribution outside of the Festival circuit as well. The main trump of the film is undoubtedly lead actress Macarena Gómez and her unique depiction of the eccentric yet lovable protagonist character Barbara. She's a medical student with the vanity and obnoxious ego of Paris Hilton and the homicidal tendencies of Ted Bundy. Barbara addresses to the camera and explains in great detail how she commits the murders and why (kind of like in "Man Bites Dog" but even sillier) and she considers herself to be a very normal twenty-something girl with normal needs and desires. She doesn't even need to cover up her serial killing crimes, because who would ever suspect a cute, fragile and cherubic looking student like her? But then our serial killer queen falls in love, and her brainiac-boyfriend just invented a device that brings all of Barbara's murder victims back to life as vengeful zombies. Will she be stolid enough to kill them all again and live happily ever with her boyfriend? Miguel Martí and Paco Cabezas are obviously two completely horror-obsessed geeks, as they processed a massive number of tributes, inside jokes and references towards several classics of the genre into their screenplay. The fact they couldn't decide to make a serial killer movie or a zombie flick and then simply combined the two themes into one demented movie should already say enough about their devotion to the world of horror. "Sexy Killer" is an unceasingly entertaining movie, with colorful characters and typical horror clichés that are deliberately magnified to emphasize the comedic effect. There's the stalk-and-slaughter scene at the girls' locker room at the beginning (with a fantastic twist), the zombie resurrecting sequence at the morgue, the fraternity house party turning into a bloodbath near the end and much, much more! The gore effects are explicit, the sleaze is gratuitous and the humor is often crude and tasteless, but yet this movie remains accessible and hilarious at all times. See this film, if possible with friends and a truckload of alcohol and you will have a guaranteed blast.

SEXY KILLER is a one-of-a-kind Spanish production that tells the story of the titular character, a female serial killer who goes around bumping off everybody who falls foul of her. The story is told in a light-hearted and jokey way despite the copious amounts of spraying bloodshed and gore, with the star frequently breaking the fourth wall of cinema by turning to address the viewer.

It's a simplistic tale but a madcap one, packed with high energy. The narrative is jiggled with so that various parts are told in flashback, perhaps to hide what would otherwise be a predictable tale. The main issue I had with it was that I found chief actress Macarena Gomez's acting to be a bit lacking and her character to be entirely unsympathetic; if they'd somehow managed to make the killer a likable creation then this would have been a lot better.

Still, things do pick up in the second half, with a twist in the story bringing zombies to play, and then we get some BRAINDEAD-style mayhem in the big climax. Horror fans will enjoy the many and frequent references to classics of the genre, but make no mistake, this is a simple black comedy done up to look like more than it is.

Barbara is a university student who enjoys killing people even more than she enjoys sex, and as the bodies pile up the hunt is on for the Campus Killer. The opening scene spoofs Scream in a girls' changing room, good start. Sadly it soon went downhill for me when she starts narrating a series of flashbacks to her next victim. Later on a bunch of zombies get added to the mix, making this a slasher/zombie spoof. It does get rather silly and the film tries to cram in too much. It is quite fast paced, being Spanish language I found it a little hard at times reading the subtitles and trying to see what was happening at the same time. The comedy side does get too much at times but there is plenty of gore to help balance it out. I won't be giving it a second viewing.

The movie is almost to clever for itself. Breaking the 4th wall very early on, it still tries to be a "relatively" normal movie. It's a parody of course, but as it is very self-aware and self-conscious, the jokes are hit and miss.

It's a nice change to have a woman being in the lead role, in a movie like this, but in the end, even that joke is worn off, pretty quickly. It's actually pretty silly and you can have a lot of fun, if you stop thinking about a few things. So just try to enjoy it if you can and not see the many mistakes/flaws the story has. A funny horror movie that dares to be bloody and funny at the same time then ...

This is the movie that would have resulted if a Spanish fashion designer had adapted American Psycho whilst on acid. Full of jokes and nods to the genre (not all of which work), but this is still well worth a watch.