Wednesday 2 May 2018

Slasher.com (USA 2017: Dir Chip Gubera)

In America a serial killer is stalking women via dating apps, using a variety of aliases. Against that backdrop we meet Jack and Kristy, a young couple who have been chatting online and have decided to meet for the first time - they seem to be ok, right? A squeaky clean pair whose nervousness about meeting up in real life is compounded by the rather ambitious decision to make their first date a country cabin rental.

The cabin owners are the folksy Myers family who welcome the newbie daters perhaps a little too enthusiastically. Momma Myers (a rather ripe turn from 1980s/90s exploitation star Jewel Return of the Living Dead Shepard) serves up the home cooking, while larger than life husband Jessie is rather pre-occupied with the Myers' daughter, precocious Southern belle Caitlin.

I'm guessing that you won't be surprised if I tell you that this movie doesn't unfold with Jack and Kristy having a lovely weekend of creature comforts, recreational activities, conversations round the dinner table and good ol' country fare; although these elements do all crop up - just not in the way the young couple would have liked. For yes, the Myers household has adopted the 'family that slays together, stays together' motif as a lifestyle choice, and half way through things get very hairy for our young lovers.

Momma and Jessie get to know Jack in Slasher.com
Slasher.com, despite its clunky title (which recalls William Malone's pitiful 2002 Feardotcom, a film I had rather hoped to permanently forget about) is actually a lot of fun, a Southern backwoods exploitationer with a distinctly EC comics flavour.

If young couple Jack (Ben Kaplan) and Kristy (Morgan Carter) are a rather simpering pair - although there's a reason for that - they're more than made up for by the colourful Myers clan. Shepard's larger than life performance is huge fun, but R.A. Mihailoff and Rebecca Crowley are also good value as Jessie and Caitlin respectively.

Shot on a low budget in Columbia, Missouri, Chip Gubera's latest feature (actually filmed in 2016) is a film that doesn't take itself too seriously - perhaps unsurprising for a director whose first feature, Song of the Dead (2005) was a zombie rock musical, and who has turned his hand to not one but two wrestling horror movies. Slasher.com has some story twists that you may be able to see coming but are no less pleasurable for it, and the whole cast look like they're having a good time. Not bad at all.

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