Director: Josh Forbes
Cast: Jonah Ray Rodriguez, Kiran Deol, Thomas Lennon, Alex Winter
Have I Seen it Before: Two weeks into the new year, and this is the first new movie I’ve managed to see. On that metric alone, it’s an early favorite for the best movie of the year.
Did I Like It: As a horror movie, it’s ultimately too cheap and bending over backwards to find justifications for its makeup effects to really love. Going beyond that, it’s more interested in being gross before it ever tries to be gory, and it really took me to get to this film before I realized that gross without gore is just gross, and it takes more than a little bit to offset the original imbalance.
I might get to the point where I actively dislike the film when I come to the inescapable conclusion that I actively dislike all of the characters, protagonist and antagonist alike. Vlad (Winter, also co-producing) is a finely-tuned creation of irritation, but William (Rodriguez, also also co-producing*) is the same kind of deeply frustrating person that makes life and the human experience may be designed to irritate only.
All of that would be an easy way to say that I’m thoroughly displease with the film, but damned if I didn’t find myself laughing throughout. It almost, almost (but not quite) repairs my diminished first impression Shudder left on me**.
But truly, I hate the title of the film. It’s something people would come up with for a bargain basement video game in the early 2000s. Honey, I Dismembered Vlad would have worked a lot better. Almost anything. Sophie’s Choice would have been a better choice for the movie.
*If others were involved with this movie, one would be hard-pressed to deny that the film would be right at home on a newer episode Mystery Science Theater 3000.
**Honestly, the thing is buggy with a heavily diminished library. It’s as if the worst impulses of both Netflix and Paramount+ were forged into a separate streaming service.