Review: SPLATTER MOVIE (2009)

SPLATTER MOVIE (2009)
DIRECTOR: Amy Lynn Best
CAST: Amy Lynn Best, Nikki McCrae, Elske McCain, Rachelle Williams, Tiffany Warren, Alyssa Herron, Tom Sullivan, and Debbie Rochon
STUDIO: HappyCloudPictures.com

SYNOPSIS: Splatter Movie is a mock-documentary chronicling independent horror filmmaker Amy Lynn Best making an independent horror film. Accompanying her are legendary special effects expert Tom Sullivan, and a bevy of scream queens led by Debbie Rochon. Amidst technical complications, lesbian scenes, and buckets of gore, someone – or something – dressed as the monster Grendel is actually slaughtering the cast and crew. Or is that a put-on, too?

McBLOVIATION:
Meta-horror has its moments, most famously in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) and the first Scream (1996) but, in general, that’s all you can count on – moments. A clever line here, a truthful observation there, maybe even the occasional point you’ve never made on your own.

But the concept of self-aware, self-critical horror has, so far, been too prone to cutesy in-jokes and self-congratulation to ever work across the entire length of a feature.

Splatter Movie is not a before-and-after line for the ages whereupon we see meta-horror come to its fullest fruition, but it is very good, and it’s inventive and entertaining, and it’s an impressive accomplishment for all involved.

Creator Amy Lynn Best proves to be a compelling screen presence, serving as a great center for the madness around her.

She has also concocted an original format for Splatter Movie’s story that blends straightforward interviews and behind-the-scenes footage with on-set shoots and a fictional slasher narrative.

There are bloody murders, there are tongue-sucking girl-girl make-out sessions, and there are naked boobs (although not Amy Lynn’s, which she should correct in the follow-up).

There is also Tom Sullivan talking classic special effects, a guy in a boogeyman mask slaughtering the unsuspecting in spectacularly messy fashion and – gloriously – Debbie Rochon showing off her once-severed, now-reconstructed fingers, in the gnarliest display of celebrity body anomaly since Dan Aykroyd probed his webbed toes with a screwdriver in Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video (1979).

Splatter Movie is a howling hoot, a terrific gift for horror fans from a terrifically gifted cast and crew.

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