Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Matthew John Lawrence
Starring: Sari Arambulo, Molly Brown, Eddie Leavy, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Billy
Burke
If a movie is set in a distinctly unique world, it needs to make that
world convincing, otherwise the audience will spend too much time
distracted by questions regarding its foundations. A movie can be set in
the most fantastical world imaginable, but if it can't nail down the rules
of that world and stick to them, it's in danger of collapsing.
That's the case with the cheekily titled Bloody Axe Wound, a postmodern horror comedy that posits a bizarre alternate
'80s-influenced America where slasher villains indulge in mass murder, all
of which are committed to film and rented out to a willing public in video
stores. This premise raises various questions that the movie never
addresses, the most glaring of which is why the public would go along with
this.
Roger Bladecut (Billy Burke), is one such killer, his face covered
in deformed burn marks ala Freddy Krueger. Bladecut selects teenage
victims from the local high school, circling their pictures in the school
yearbook and putting an X through their mugshots once he's butchered them.
His exploits are filmed, part of a long-running successful franchise that
he rents out in the video store he runs. Bladecut has recently begun
losing his audience to a more glamourous killer, Butch Slater (a blink and
you'll miss it cameo from Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and so decides
to take his franchise in a new direction with "Son of Bladecut," a reboot
that will see him accompanied in his bloody trade by his store manager
Mackenzie (Matt Hopkins).
This riles up Roger's adopted teenage daughter Abbie (Sari Arambulo), who is sick of working in the video store and wants to accompany her
father on his gory exploits. In an attempt to impress the old man, Abbie
decides to embark on her own killing spree, donning a wolf mask (like the
one worn by that bloke from the electro pop duo Damn the Witch Siren) and
targeting teens. To get closer to her victims, Abbie enrols herself in the
local high school. But things get messy when she makes friends and
develops her first crush on Sam (Molly Brown), a
too-cool-for-school leather jacketed lesbian who opens her innocent eyes
to the real world.
Writer/director Matthew John Lawrence attempts to blend a postmodern
slasher with a high school comedy, but the two never quite gel because
the rules of his unique milieu just don't make any sense. The idea of
the daughter of a sociopathic killer discovering her father has lied
to her about humanity's worth is one with huge potential, especially
in today's world where young people are increasingly finding the real
world doesn't reflect their parents ideas. Also worth exploring is the
theme of having to choose between family and someone you love,
something that many young queer horror fans can no doubt relate to.
But Lawrence smothers these simple concepts in too much poorly
thought-out meta nonsense. The relationship between Bladecut and the
rest of the town just doesn't make any sense. We're supposed to
believe that he slaughters the townsfolk's children and then they
happily rent video-tapes of said slaughter from his business. At one
point Sam gives an emotional speech about how her previous girlfriend
was butchered by Bladecut, and how she's sick of attending funerals of
her friends. This scene might work if Bladecut wasn't a well-known
public figure in town, but it's simply head-scratching in the film's
actual context. Why isn't the town converging on Bladecut's video
store with revenge in mind? And if Abbie works in a video store,
surely she's interacted with plenty of people before joining high
school, so why would their true nature come as such a surprise to
her?
It's a shame Bloody Axe Wound is such a frustrating mess as Arambulo and Brown have an endearing chemistry that might have made
their relationship worth investing in if the film around their
characters made so much as the bare minimum of sense. On the horror
front, it has a couple of inventive kills (the highlight involving death
by swimming trophy) that might be enough to satisfy the most undemanding
genre fan if enough beer is consumed, but its idiotic and ill-conceived
world-building will leave you nursing a sore head.
Bloody Axe Wound is on Shudder
from March 21st.
