It’s a trio of flicks that range from sleazy to stylish…and deliver death and despair, of course.
MARGAUX (2022)
It sounded like it could be fun. Pretty people party at a smart house controlled by an app, and then there’s a glitch in the system…
Instead, things immediately promise to be hokey when CGI mechanical octopus arms start coming out of the woodwork to service the guests in various ways. There’s an awful ballad played during a montage of everyone getting familiar with the house. There are plenty of faux buildups that make us think the Margaux app is about to get gruesome on guests.
Then…Margaux creates 3D printed versions of a couple of the guys in the house to teach them a lesson about having fantasies of seeing their same sex friends kiss. Awesome.
And this is where the movie misses the golden opportunity to focus solely on one aspect of its premise; Margaux prints 3D versions of the friends and those 3D versions go off to kill the actual friends. That’s all we needed.
Instead we’re served a pot of confusion including Margaux killing guests, Margaux splattering people in a white spooge used to make 3D printed products, and eventually Margaux just creating an assembly line of clones that start killing each other (and oozing white spooge) instead of actual real people being in danger.
This movie is a disappointing mess. But there’s that 3D printed gay kiss, plus this guy.
If I were there to make demands of Margaux, I would just ask her to repeatedly clone him and make him kiss himself.
KILL HER GOATS (2023)
At this point, the only thing I wanted from writer/director Steve Wolsh was for him to make the prequel and sequel to Muck, which was reportedly supposed to be the second film in an out of order trilogy that was never completed. Instead, he brings us Kill Her Goats. Because I liked plenty of what Muck had to offer, I fell for the social media hype promoting the limited edition 4k release of his new movie. Unfortunately, it’s even more of a mess than Muck, and that’s without having the distinction of being a single installment of an unfinished trilogy.
Kill Her Goats comes across as Wolsh making his wet dream come to life—he hired a bunch of playmates, told them they were going to be stars of a legitimate horror movie, and then just made them run around with their tits out and tight panties wedged up their coochies just so he could stick his 4k camera as far up there as possible to capture every fully waxed pore.
A lengthy title card intro describes a family in the past living in a house in Cape Cod that makes its occupants go mad.
Then we get a cool scene of a couple in a tent getting slaughtered by a goat-masked killer with a chainsaw. Awesome. This is the stuff that reminds us that Wolsh can pull off gritty horror if he sets his mind to it. Unfortunately, in this case he sets his mind almost exclusively to T&A.
We are then informed that what comes next happened earlier that day, leaving us clinging to hope for the good slasher the first scene promised.
Here is what we get:
A blonde, busty bimbo arrives at that Cape Cod house, which she just bought. While saying out loud that there’s no way that this house with a grisly past could make somebody crazy, this grown ass woman jumps up and down on her bed and skips around her property talking to herself, completely proving herself to be crazy.
Next, her two bimbo friends arrive. I think most of the budget of this film went to securing the rights to have the girls briefly sing Nelly’s “Hot in Herre”.
Then it’s filler galore in footage that will most likely only entertain fourteen-year-old boys…and the director. One thing I know for sure is that it killed the mood for me and the two other gays I watched it with.
Wine is spilled multiple times. There’s a long shower scene that seemingly begins in the morning and ends at night. The main girl changes crop tops three times so that we can gawk at her tits and so Wolsh can plug his movie Muck, the title of which is written across the front of all three shirts…and the back of the tiny shorts she squeezes into.
There’s a singing in the shower montage, after which the squeaky clean girl slips into skimpy clothes, goes downstairs to get wine, comes back upstairs, and removes the skimpy clothes. Wolsh then finds reasons to make her get out of bed three times (Oops! I forgot to turn off the lamp on the other side of the room!) just so he can get the same exact shot of her ass as she climbs back into bed. Then she has a dream that’s completely irrelevant to the movie and barely more than a screen full of fog machine in a cemetery. She actually awakes from this dream sequence to go talk to her friends at her bedroom door (for another one of those ass shots when she gets back into bed). However, the editor, who demonstrates repeatedly that they don’t understand what makes an editor an editor, seems to forget the girl woke up, because next thing you know, her dream sequence is back for more.
Then a goat comes on the scene to roam around the house. Confusing thing is it’s not the main girl’s goat. She has no goats. I’m not sure whose goats are being referenced in the movie title.
This takes us to the 57-minute mark, when two goat-masked killers arrive on the scene. The girls are chased, and we get the best line of the film from one of the girls when the goat runs by again: “Why are there goats?” I feel you, sister.
After some slaughtering and another shot of the ass Wolsh loves, a new girl comes on the scene. In about 30 seconds she reveals a new backstory and another character we’ve never even met so that when she unmasks one of the killers there’s an instant killer motivation. WTF? Even worse, we never find out who was in the other goat mask and what their motivation was, because that killer is never unmasked.
Now, just for the hell of it, we get what basically amounts to a pillow fight scene with axes instead. I guess this weird situation can be explained by the mere fact that the house is known for driving people crazy.
Just for good measure, we get another shot of the director’s favorite ass.
We never find out who the couple from the beginning in the tent was. And considering everything that happens during the movie happens “earlier that day” before the tent scene takes place in the timeline, it also makes no sense that the tent couple falls victim to one of the goat-masked killers after they’ve already been taken down by the main girls (hopefully to prevent a sequel).
Wolsh had a fricking goat-masked killer with a double-ended chainsaw at his disposal, but apparently his mind was too busy imagining the possibilities of what a double-ended dildo could do to these playmates.
WATCHER (2022)
Maika Monroe of It Follows fame stars in this take on the Rear Window concept.
She moves with her husband into an apartment in his home country and immediately feels isolated. He works long hours, and he tends to speak to everyone in his native language, rarely remembering to translate for her.
Then she notices a man across the way staring at her all the time.
Be warned that this is a very slow burn. There’s very little action as she learns that a serial killer is hacking off the heads of young women and then begins to grow paranoid of every man she sees.
Her husband and the audience begin to question her sanity.
Since nothing significantly suspenseful is really happening, almost an hour in she has a nightmare of being attacked in her bedroom—a totally unnecessary sequence that just makes it feel like the creators fear their movie isn’t keeping the audience engaged.
Despite the slow pace, Watcher did what it needed to do…it kept me wondering how it was going to end. And damn, the finale of this film is chilling and intense. making the slow burn end in fire.
