Delivering an awkward mish-mash of reality television’s pretentious claims at genuine drama combined with some riotously silly horror movie clichés, this stalk ‘n’ slash send up, while shooting for a dark and wryly sarcastic, is sadly not quite as clever as it thinks it is.
Paul Wesley stars as Jake Tanner, a young director hired by a nightmare executive Lee (Cyia Batten) to head to deepest darkest North Dakota to document a legendarily bad high-school hockey team’s run at the state championship. On top of that he has to baby sit LA’s most notorious diva, the spoiled and snooty Blanca Champion (Kaley Cuoco), who is tagging along as a PA so she can do research for her first big film role.
Freaks, Geeks, and Weirdos
Helped along (more hindered really) by local hires – AD Keir (Gloria Votsis) and sound guy Mike (Jason London) – Tanner valiantly tries to honor his commitments despite uncooperative subjects, an inept crew and Lee who has decided she wants him to dig around into the mysterious accidental death of the former coach’s daughter. The fact that a mysterious killer is brutally murdering his cast and crew one by one doesn’t help much either.
Fisher has an excellent idea but lacks the experience and the discipline to really put it through the shredder, nail down the finer elements, and discard the rest. The set-up is gold with the crew in the back of beyond, wandering the seventh level of bucolic hell where cell reception is patchy and they’re still inventing the Internet. Though he seems to be trapped in a reality TV mindset whereby motion creates emotion and insists on wildly switching locations from scene to scene without really moving anything forward.
The idea behind Jake Tanner as a straight-laced professional was clearly an attempt to portray the only sane man in a room full of lunatics, but rather than cool and collected Wesley is just dull as dishwater. Thankfully his band of colorfully quirky supporting players manage to paint over some of the drab, but the
Less Than the Sum of Its Parts
As a slasher movie, he ticks plenty of boxes; the anniversary of the dead girl’s death approaches and a suspected killer is on the loose from prison. But the gory payoff comes in the form of random slayings that seemingly serve to give Fisher an out whereby he doesn’t have to think of anything else for a character to do. The limited cast, which is tied to a miniscule budget, essentially renders the big unmasking a moot point as by then it’s a small matter of noting who is still alive and making the simplest of deductions.
The reality TV angle shows flashes of hilarity, chiefly whenever the magnificently bitchy Lee is on screen or the creepy Mike tries to join in a normal conversation, but it’s undone by an infuriatingly drawn out attempt to give pampered rich bitch Blanca her redemption without ever giving us even a hint as to why she deserves to have it.
On the plus side Killer Movie is manageably brief enough so by the time you start to get irritated by its flaws, it’s basically over. Where did Fisher get his ideas for Bianca Champion, the awful, platinum blonde mega-bitch masquerading as someone worthy of attention? “Well I worked a lot on ‘The Simple Life’…” Jeff recalls.
