If you’re looking for indie horror with body counts, these days your best bet is to turn to Tuuuuuubiiiiiii.Tu!bi! (Love the new jingle when you open the app). Let’s find out how it turned out for me with the latest trio of slashers from my Tubi watchlist.
LOWLIFES (2024)
Backwoods horror gets a social commentary with Lowlifes, which depends heavily on defying expectations to stand out from all the other backwoods horror flicks. However, despite some unexpected plot points and a timely concept based on the fractured country we live in, it still relies on the usual tropes of the subgenre.
A family of four—dad, mom, brooding teenage daughter, and goofy son (he’s the scariest part of the film)—is on a road trip in an RV when they encounter a couple of suspicious rednecks. It’s an unnerving start, and even becomes reminiscent of the hitchhiker scene from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Before long, the family ends up at a house with a whole redneck family (complete with a big menacing goon). They are welcomed inside and invited to dinner. Uh-oh.
You can easily guess where all this is going. It’s a slow burn that takes quite some time to get to the horror (48 minutes before the first kill), but we do eventually get to the battle of the families in the final act, and the brutality is quite satisfying and pleasantly gnarly.
The fresh part is that it breaks from the norms of backwoods family horror flicks (including a lesbian element).
However, the issue that sort of killed the tension and suspense for me is that we are presented way too early with the truth of what’s really going on, so there are simply no surprises, and we end up just waiting for everyone to get gruesomely killed. You know, like in every other backwoods family movie.
KILLER BODY COUNT (2024)
Religious rehab for teens slashers have become somewhat of a thing in the past few years, and Killer Body Count is one of the better ones in terms of getting the message across about the evils of God nuts while delivering big time on the slasher elements.
Having said that, after a thrilling setup scene of a couple getting killed by someone in a Devil mask and robe, the film runs into a bit of a pacing problem for almost forty minutes…a good sign that the 110-minute running time should have been rethought.
A teenager girl is caught hooking up with a boy in church, so her father sends her to the religious rehab place in the woods.
The fun part of getting to know the characters before the kills kick in is that these kids really are horny, and they spend a lot of time peeping each other in the showers, which gives us a nice naked guys scene, landing this one on the stud stalking page.
It’s like Porky’s with actual pork instead of puss, and it even flirts with homoeroticism. Sadly, no full-fledged gay guy ever comes to fruition.
When the religious extremist counselors finally catch on to the sexual hijinks, humiliation and minor torture are inflicted. The annoying thing about this is that there are literally only two counselors and about ten kids in the program, so the kids could easily have overpowered them at any time and stopped the insanity. Also, the main girl has already witnessed a murder (a bloody murder of a dude with a hot naked bod that brings a whole new meaning to the classic dirty talk trope “I’m going to split you in two”), yet there doesn’t seem to be enough urgency by anyone to take it seriously.
In true slasher tradition, there’s a story of a priest who killed a bunch of sinners 20 years ago, which the church covered up. Therefore, it isn’t all that surprising to the kids when their friends start turning up dead. There are some fantastic death scenes with tension, atmosphere, and even some chasing.
There are, however, also some weak spots. There’s a scene of the kids stealing a key from a counselor that is too whimsical and doesn’t fit the tone of the rest of the film. The kids finally prove what I knew all along (and before half of them were dead); they could have overpowered the counselors at any time. There’s also a gay sex scene at last, but it’s a lesbian coupling, and it goes on way too long and kills the mood. Of course, my gay ass would have said it wasn’t long enough had it been a guy on guy scene.
Worst of all, the finale is just so bombastic. It goes way over the top as it overstates the “religion is evil” theme, and way too many players are suddenly thrown into the mix. It’s kind of like for every one thing the film pulls off perfectly, it’s negated with a total miss.
PILLOW PARTY MASSACRE (2023)
This is sort of an April Fools horror, but it drops the ball. The opening is classic, with kids at a Spring Fling school dance on April 1st. All songs used in the movie come courtesy of now wave band Feeding Fingers, who are definitely going to get played on my Future Flashbacks show. So as the kids are dancing to the strains of a Feeding Fingers song, a bunch of girls play a prank on one of their friends. In 80s slasher throwback fashion, there’s a tragic outcome and someone ends up in a mental institution. Thing is, I immediately knew who the killer was going to be, and most other slasher veterans probably will as well.
Two years later the friends decide to have a reunion at a cabin in the woods. April Fools’ Day is completely forgotten. Bummer. Anyway, word is there’s been an escape from the mental institution, and one girl even calls out that this is like the beginning of a horror movie. That fear falls apart when they have a run-in with a homeless man at a rest stop, but instead of him warning them that they’re all doomed, they give him food and money and he goes on his merry way. WTF?
The film unfolds very slowly with excessive talking, most notably about the guilt they all feel for the prank they played on their friend. There’s even an all-girl pillow fight (there better be considering the title), but instead of a sexy pillow fight, it’s an actual fight! Awesome.
There’s killer POV galore, including the killer sneaking into a bedroom…to steal a pillowcase. This film should have been called Pillowcase Massacre.
Also, other characters show up to raise the body count, which doesn’t kick in until 54 minutes into the movie. The killer costume is serviceable…a mask and a robe.
The death scenes are a combination of gory practical effects and absolutely horrible CGI effects that made us laugh (the hubby and I watched with friend), signifying that this is definitely one that can be better appreciated if you have a watch party, because multiple guffaws enhance the unintentional humor.
Is it a fairly bad movie? Yes. But it has entertaining kills and a great soundtrack, so I wouldn’t deter anyone who loves slashers from checking it out.
