This is a movie about a horror movie more than it is a horror movie. That is something we need to get out of the way before digging into this film, which comes at you with mixed messages sometimes. They are making fun of their demographics, but their demographics need to be made fun of. The whole slasher genre this film really parodies in a fourth-wall-smashing manner is just a vehicle for their underlying messages that are sometimes more overt than others. The movie is carried by Gillan Anderson, who plays Dolly Parton. This is even funnier when you think of how Dolly was made the patron saint of hipster feminists. But irony is layered over irony, and the director's intent vs. what happens might be conflicting.
Without a doubt, it's almsot like the Spinal Tap of the Hollywood Horror industry today. The slasher is a bizarre character named Little Death, who, like at the bottom of their version of Crystal Lake, They go on killing sprees in slow motion to Counting Crows songs. The blood is ridiculous geysers, so much that it never turns your stomach like if this was in a fact, an actual gore fest; instead, it is cartoonish. To its credit the movie is beautifully shot and very creative. The points it makes about the indsutry need to be made louder and less ambiguous; that would have made it more of a horror movie if it was challenging beliefs and making viewers feel more uncomfortable, but instead it leaves a margin of doubt if they really mean what they are saying.
Perhaps they are playing it safe as they understand the fine line they have to walk when towing the party line. This movie s will fail you as a haorror movie, but aside from marketing it's not one , not do they really intend it to be one. The industry are just whores trying to grab whatever dollars they can by appealing to everyone, so it plays it safe in that regard, and keeps the razor sharp wit left to the blade of the killer who has a Wes Anderson romp full of playful lesbian whimsy. It's a great movie ,just not a scary one, but a piece of art Hipster cinephiles will try to label as hoor depsite the joke being on them here.
