Easter Casket

B grade fun .

some good one liners Worth 8+ Bunny is Hilarious and hyper violent.

Big time nudity and exaggerated long scenes.

This should be played and compete in festivals and win audience award.

Do not read too much spoilers before you see it.

Sometimes, during those quiet times before sleep, I wonder why it took me so long to discover the independent creative hurricane that is Dustin Mills. Imagine if Full Moon Pictures and Troma married and gave birth to a brilliant young studio, this would be Dustin Mills Productions.

Dustin Mills' Easter Casket is a fantastic horror offering from the underground with a fun and light edge. As with his other films, it looks gorgeous, has a great score, solid performances, a witty script and perfect pace. Mills balances drama with genuine laugh-out-loud puppet antics in a manner that very few directors could pull off. Moving from an intimate human love scene to puppet decadence that puts The Wolf of Wall Street to shame (with the fabric-skinned ones sniffing lines of cocaine whilst experiencing the rampant appetite of the principal character, a certain Easter Bunny), this is jaw-dropping stuff.

Some of the effects work in this minuscule-budget movie are beautiful to behold. I'm always left a bit shell shocked by a Dustin Mills movie. There's so much imaginative goodness crammed in, it's like watching a film that's popped straight out of the director's mind. There's no compromise in these productions. Who needs a budget when you've talent oozing out of every pore?

The cast are excellent as always and there are some familiar faces along for the ride. I'd not seen Jason Crowe before but he's a very likable lead with real charisma. Mills always picks great femme fatales in his productions. Erin (Skinless, Kill That Bitch) Ryan is cute as a button and a great actress. She manages to maintain a straight face and delivers a strong performance whilst all sorts of brilliant lunacy explodes colourfully around her. Allison Fitzgerald makes an appearance as a naughty nun whilst (in the extended version of the film) the delightful Hayley Jay Madison has a naughty and memorable appearance with Peter Cottontail.

I love this picture. Another 10 out of 10. It's surely only a matter of time before the big studios discover Dustin Mills. Whilst this can be the end of true creativity for some artists, I do see this gentleman becoming something like the next Peter Jackson. You read it here, first.

Easter Casket is a remarkable little film, made for only $3000 dollars it looks incredible and the creators should be extremely proud of what they have accomplished. But the film itself, well that's another story.

Easter Casket (Bear with me on this) tells the story of the Easter Bunny who has been summoned and on the warpath after learning that the Catholic Church is removing all the rabbit & egg symbolism away from Easter. Hellbent on getting revenge and becoming a god the tiny wise cracking rabbit leaves a bloody mess in his wake.

With inventive kills and some genuinely funny jokes nobody can say that Easter Casket is devoid of quality. It has it's moments and as mentioned manages to look incredible considering it's budget.

Though advertised as a straight horror I can assure you it isn't, it's a horror as much as Jack Frost (1997) which is another movie with a silly punning villian.

Here is the problem though, too much is simply not funny, too much is cringe inducing and had me feeling rather embarassed to be watching it and finally too much of it is crude for the sake of crudeness. I'm no prude and rarely complain about nudity, but this was gratuitous.

With some better writing Easter Casket might have been something watchable, but in it's current form it's bit of an embarassment that isn't worth watching for the few funny moments.

The Good:

Looks incredible for the budget

Some real laughs are to be had

Awesome soundtrack

The Bad:

Crass

Some cringe inducing moments

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Nuns have gnarly bush

Catholics are perky and succulent

Fuzzy Doombringer would make an awesome band name

Priest collars are now part of their mandatory uniform.......a t-shirt

It takes the military seconds to deploy gunships and tanks to a scene

Summoning the Easter Bunny is easy, all you need is a nun, a knife and some catchy music for her to dance nude to.......for some reason

Upset over the treatment of the holiday, the Easter Bunny escapes into our world to wreak havoc on the church groups intending to officially ban the holiday and forces a devout priest to protect his next targeted victim before he kills her to complete his deadly mission.

For a micro-budget effort, this one was quite enjoyable. What really makes this one so much fun is the fact that there's no end to the wild antics on display throughout here which makes for quite a thrilling time. The different changes to the storyline throughout here, from the universe established here that depicts the church as a corporation of demon hunters possessing all sorts of high-tech weaponry in the fight against demons and other supernatural creatures to the concept of the Easter Bunny as a creature of folklore who wants to keep the celebration going against those who want to abolish it, make for quite an appealing and disparate element that makes for quite a different tone throughout here. This universe allows for plenty of enjoyable exploitative elements as the two sides engage in their pitched battle here with tons of appropriate holiday-themed content, from explosive easter candies to bombs shaped like eggs to deadly flying puffs and much more throughout here that give this one a rather fun feel throughout here while adding alongside the rather fun action within here, from the opening slaughter of the demons in their special cult to the rampage in the hotel that features him going through the different groups of priests and associates there with them which features tons of gruesome, unique kills here using the holiday paraphernalia and the big series of brawls he engages in against the different hench- creatures sent against him which all gives this some solid action scenes throughout here. The big finale against the gigantic creature makes for a goofy and somewhat silly conclusion here which manages to fit in alongside the rest of the action here and makes for quite a cheesy film overall when added alongside the continuous nudity and goofy special effects. There are a few minor flaws here which are quite obvious to see throughout here in that there's just no way the budget here could've told the story accurately, leaving this one with some jarring special effects no matter how goofy or silly it is. The fact that the main creature is obviously a hand-held puppet, the minions are simple sugar-filled candy and most of the film is washed over cheap and obvious CGI manages to really make the film's shortcomings all the more open to the viewer. There's also the fact that there's little sense to the story here about what's going on as there are so many different plot points being featured here, and it really could've attempted a more linear form throughout here that makes sense which this one doesn't. These here are what hold this one down.

Rated: Continuous Full Nudity, Extreme Graphic Language, Graphic Violence, several sex scenes and drug use.

This was my 5th killer Easter Bunny movie and it is by far the best. Low budget horror usually fails at comedy but this one was actually funny. There should have been 10 sequels.