Director – Jared Cohn (12/12/12, The Hulk Blood Tapes)
Starring – Richard Grieco (A House is Not A Home, 22 Jump St), Sara Malakul Lane (Sharktopus, the Domicile), and Dave Mustaine (Metalhead to Head, The Drew Carey Show)
Release Date – 2017
Rating – 3/5
Halloween. Halloween is Christmas for horror fans. It is one the one day a year that most major retailers indulge them with their monsters, mad men, and supernatural beings. I love the decorations, mascots donning Halloween costumes to sell products, the shitty covers of classic horror scores and themes compilations for cheap, and all the horror movies scattered throughout most stores. Halloween truly is a magical time of year.
With Halloween just 10 days away it was time to kick it into high gear and start on the Halloween flicks. One film I was recently sent to review was Jared Cohn’s new film Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill. I had no idea Jared was working on this but I was excited that he tackled a Halloween flick regardless if I liked it or not. I want to thank MVD for sending this one my way to check out.
**Spoiler Alert**The film begins with an American solider as he is held hostage while fighting in the Middle East and has his face skinned. Fast forward to now and an all girl rock band is playing a gig. After the show one of the band members and her boyfriend get high and start making out before she cries rape. The American solider, now wheelchair bound, intervenes and gets his ass kicked.
He then storms off leaving the solider to lay on the ground. When the rest of the band hears the commotion they head out to see what is going on to hear the solider say he will get them back. Later that night their band breaks down and they get a lift to their next gig when they are gassed. They wake up in a room where the solider tells them they have to play his game or they all will die.**Spoiler Alert**
Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Killlooked liked an interesting watch. Jared is very vocal about his projects on social media so the fact I missed that he was working on this film baffles me. I was able to meet him several years back here in West Virginia at the horror and sci-fi convention Shockacon where Eugene Clark introduced us. Since then I’ve tried my best to check out all his films. Some of them were hits but a few just wasn’t for me. Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill was entertaining for the most part but did lack originality.
The acting in this one is solid. The cast is able to piece together some fun characters but it is difficult to tell which of the ladies is who. You can easily confuse each of the characters as someone else. All their personalities mesh together and there is no clear way of knowing who the strong and the weak are. A little diversity in the cast would have made the film a little more interesting.
The story for this one lack originality but that doesn’t make it a bad film. It was entertaining. The film is Josie and the Pussycats meets Saw. A punk band getting kidnapped and forced to play a game is fun in theory but this film has a hard time setting itself apart from the look and feel of the Saw franchise.
In fact, Megadeth front man Dave Mustaine voices the mastermind of the sick game and sounds almost like the Jigsaw killer himself, Tobin Bell. He is putting the band through a dangerous game to prove a point similar to Jigsaw who tortures and subsequently kills those that take life for granted because he is dying of cancer while they get to live. The solider puts them through their trials because they don’t know what true sacrifice is where he was willing to sacrifice it all for his country and flag. The film relies heavily on torture devices and the gritty look that was made famous in the films previously mentioned.
Finally, the film uses a lot of practical effects and computer generated. I normally dislike CGI but the film is able to blend the two to where they work as one to make the kills look even better. We don’t get any gore but there is a decent amount of blood. The kills are pretty straight forward and mostly with guns. Overall, Halloween Pussy Trap Kill Kill is a solid watch but does lack originality. I would recommend this one if you are looking for something a little different this Halloween season.
Absolute garbage.