It’s a trio of killer flicks I checked out on Shudder and Prime.
SKULL: THE MASK (2020)
This Brazilian slasher film follows the trend of modern horror flicks that try to capture the feel of gory 1970s grindhouse flicks. There’s not a lot to think about here—just get on board for the splatterfest.
In the 1940s, an evil military experiment involving an ancient skull mask goes horribly wrong, kicking the film into high gear with some slaughter.
In the present day, the mask is unearthed at a construction site and lands in the hands of a lesbian. For whatever reason, her girlfriend decides to perform a ritual with the mask, awakening its evil spirit.
The mask attaches to some dude and goes on a wild killing spree, making this a basic slasher with a masked killer. Yay!
A dirty cop is on the case to find the mask, other people are plotting to get their hands on the mask, and all the while the masked killer is tearing people limb from limb.
Faces are peeled, guts are spilled, and the killer even attaches a cleaver to a line of intestine and uses that as a deadly whip. Awesome.
He even gets into a sword battle with a priest and turns a dance party into a massacre. There are no scares here, but the mutilation abounds, so dive in if you’re into that sort of thing.
THE CANYONLANDS (2021)
After watching this desert slasher, I was shocked to see all the bad reviews on Amazon Prime. If there’s any real issue here, it’s that the film is perhaps a little slow in the front half and could have been shaved down by about ten minutes. But once the killer came calling, I had a lot of fun with it.
The plot has a woman taking a small group of contest winners on a rafting trip.
The group is about as versatile and cliché as it gets:
— a social media influencer who is a caricature and cares only about the bars she’s getting on her phone and taking selfies to post
—a misogynistic, douche of a white boy who wants to be a professional fighter
—an awkward geek
—a Black guy who loves his pot
—a tough lesbian
Surprisingly, the group doesn’t raft for long. They end up hiking through the wilderness, and before long they split up for various reasons. Then out comes a zombie-like killer miner with a pickaxe to split them up even more. Yay!
Unlike most slashers, this one actually has some unique plot points, including a ghost girl and a Native American curse.
The killer is a cool creep, the kills are violent, and the scenery, whether CGI or real, is quite stunning. There’s even a cheesy-good, old school final frame jump scare.
TAILGATE (2019)
This Dutch film combines the road trip suspense of films like The Hitcher and Road Games with a leading man who makes the film infuriating…just like the asshole in that miserable movie Eden Lake that left me not giving a shit what happened to the leads because his douchey pride got in the way.
What’s weird about Tailgate is that there were times when I almost felt like it’s supposed to be a dark horror comedy; some scenes were just so absurd they made me laugh.
The premise is simple. There’s a straight couple with two young daughters heading to grandma’s house. There’s a great sequence that perfectly captures how the male ego can cause a man to work himself up into a dangerous level of road rage. The husband gets pissed at a dude in a white truck who’s going to slow, and when he finally passes the guy, they stare each other down.
Of course dad messed with the wrong man, because the van guy starts pursuing the family, eventually taking things off road and chasing them to shoot some sort of acidic chemical on them. He even makes it all the way to grandma’s house to terrorize extended family.
The killer, a plain old white dude, is painted as having an exaggerated, almost religious extremism level of morality. His need for someone to pay because a dude cut him off is psychotic.
There are great suspense sequences amplified because the husband does one stupid fucking thing after another, which is where the film becomes frustrating. It’s on purpose of course, but I’ll never understand why script writers think that’s a way to make viewers feel invested in a character.
As for the “funny” stuff, there were just some over-the-top moments, such as: the wife playing tug of war with the killer in an effort to free her husband from his grasp and completely stripping him of his pants in the process on a public street; the husband’s mother showering him down naked to remove the chemical from his body while the entire family watches on; and a ridiculous sequence of the family wreaking havoc by racing through a busy suburban neighborhood, where they are more likely to die from speeding than at the hands of the killer.
