Sometimes you just want to watch a horror movie on a Friday night and despite having a watch pile that keeps taunting you as it gets bigger, you decide to pour a glass of wine, throw on Shudder and see what they have to watch. Then you pick a movie because the name is awesome and your night is set. That’s what happened with BLOODY AXE WOUND.
The movie takes place in a world where slashers exist and their exploits become the horror movies that we know and love. The movies are all on VHS and some of the songs would put the time in the 90s. Abbie Bladecut (Sari Arambulo aka Grace from AP Bio) is the daughter of Roger Bladecut (Billy Burke), a disfigured and masked slasher who is the star of many of these movies and thus the murderer of many, many a teen. Abbie just wants to join in on the family business of murdering and renting the resulting tapes at their video store but her father doesn’t think she is cut out for it.
When Roger lets Abbie tag along on a kill, he suffers a heart attack. Not a deal breaker as he can come back from the dead. But this time, it’s a little tougher on him and he begins to realize that he might have to hang up his machete and leave the business to his protege. When said protege gets killed, Abbie steps up to the plate to try and take down their next victim, Sam Crane (Molly Brown). The only issue? Sam bests Abbie and gets away. Then she ends up falling for her would-be victim, resulting in a bit of conflict of interest. Abbie begins to wonder if there is a different path she could take instead of killing the teens of Clover Falls, but her father doesn’t want to change from the old path, setting them on a collision course in a bloody and fun tale of rebellious youth.
BLOODY AXE WOUND is a bloody and fun time. The kills are gory and disgusting and mostly practical from what I could discern. The story is humorous and breezy, though it skimps on some world-building in order to keep the pace moving, so we never quite get an explanation about how the whole kills into video tapes thing works. That said, I didn’t feel like I was hurting by missing that info and just accepted it as part of the world. Sort of like John Wick in the first movie. You just go with it. It’s got a good blend of horror and humor, straddling the line well though as with movie horror-comedies it gets more serious at the end.
It helps that the actors are game for what is going on. Arambulo shines as Abbie, a teenager looking for her father’s approval and a place in the world, even if that world involves wearing a mask and murdering people. Eddie Leavy (another AP Bio alum) as her best friend Glenn is there to help her and offer advice and clean all of her bloody clothes as he runs the local dry cleaner. I wasn’t as familiar with Molly Brown, but she was great as Sam, giving her the hard edge a tough punk should have, yet a softer edge as she and Abbie grow closer together. Burke is good as Roger, a man in advancing years who doesn’t quite want to give up the hunts of his youth or stray from tradition. The mask he wears is pretty cool, too, a weird, wooden plank of a thing that is menacing on his Jason-esque frame. It was fun seeing Jeffrey Dean Morgan in a cameo at the beginning, too. He just oozes charm and makes a great psycho.
Kudos to writer/director Matthew John Lawrence for creating such a fun world and filling it with interesting characters. I’m down for whatever he works on in the future.
If you’re looking for a fun flick that doesn’t overstay its welcome, this movie is it. Check it out.
