Hey, kids, want to satirize the reality TV craze a few years too late and miss the point of doing so entirely? Yeah? Then you should watch Killer Movie as a primer in how to pull off such a terrible idea. Yeah!
Making a horror film in and around the set of a reality TV show would actually be a pretty okay idea, I think. If the British can combine Big Brother and zombies in the form of Dead Set, we can certainly have a slasher Real World. Or perhaps The Simple Life. I bring The Simple Life up because Kaley Cuoco plays Blanca Champion, a Paris Hilton clone who stars in a reality TV show about a pair of rich celebutantes slumming it in the country. In possession of an already workable high concept and a vehicle with which to propel it, the creators of Killer Movie decided that the plot would be a lot better if it were more convoluted. This is not a reasonable assumption.
Which is why we’re taken to White Plains, North Dakota. In White Plains, most of the residents still kill their own food each day and there’s nothing of note in town except for the local bar. Somehow, though, the local hockey team has a shot at the state championship after 100 years of losing seasons. See, Blanca’s show has been canceled and she’s looking for work as a serious actress. She’s about to play – get this – the director of reality TV show in an upcoming film and, in order to do some method research, she’s shadowing an actual reality TV director, played by one of those fangy douchebags from The Vampire Diaries. If that’s not enough network TV star power for you, both the director and his new, Paris-esque production assistant are repped by Nestor Carbonell, who has this kind of ‘how did I get here?’ look on his face the entire time he’s on-screen.
I’m not done explaining the plot yet! See, it only seems like they’re there to make a reality show about this hockey team. The real drama has to do with the coach, who is the father of the star forward and who may have had a role in wrongly accusing the previous coach – whose daughter (played by notable TV actress Leighton Meester!) is dating his son, the star forward – of murder. Gasp! More drama than TNT! Even more salacious? The old coach is now out of jail, super-crazy and, some speculate, out for revenge.
Got it? No, you don’t, because now some murders actually start happening, starting with the crazy ex-coach’s daughter, then a bitchy cheerleading coach and then various members of the show’s crew, all dispatched by someone wearing a lame mask and what seems to be the very same jumpsuit made popular by the killer in Nail Gun Massacre.
By the way, the killer is Mike The Sound Guy, an antiauthoritarian drifter who lives in his van and who has an unhealthy obsession with starlet and celebutante Blanca Champion. Also of note: Mike likes to wear lots of gothy eye makeup when he’s in his killin’ garb.
Some things about that, though:
1. The murders start before Blanca is attached to the show (like the director she’s shadowing, she’s a last-minute addition to the cast). The murders that are later explained as being done ‘for’ her. If that kind of logic actually works, then I am about to score some major boyfriend points. All that stuff I did before I met you, C, that was all for you.
2. His motivation for the killings is to make people “take her more seriously as an actress.” Because ‘inadvertantly caused a dozen murders’ is a kickass line-item on a resume’. “Hmm, I know she was in House of Wax 3: Wax On, but have you seen these murders? I have to have her for this Merchant-Ivory production.”
3. Yes, 2. is completely inconsistent with 1. Welcome to Killer Movie.
4. Who exactly hires a drifter who lives in his van to work on a production like this? This is not the same as running the sound board for the Little Theater’s new production of Pippin.
5. Count von Vampire Diary gets his leg caught in a bear trap. When next seen, scant minutes later, he is walking normally.
6. The killer escapes his death at the end by wearing a convenient kevlar vest and taking drugs to put him in a deathlike state for a several minutes, then breaking out of his body bag and walking away anonymously at a crowded crime scene. Yeah, why not?
7. The clip reel of the murders that are supposed to help people take Blanca more seriously as an actress? None of the clips actually have Blanca in them. Again, welcome to Killer Movie.
One of the fun parts about a slasher is the fair-play element of figuring out who the killer is. Killer Movie doesn’t even have likely candidates that present themselves; Mike was the front-runner early on for me, and I couldn’t even ID another ‘maybe it’s that guy’ guy. The most egregious example of this is the time when Mike sends a crew member out to the creepy old coach’s cabin, where Mike has previously killed the creepy old coach, wrapped him in plastic and suspended him from the ceiling. Conveniently, Mike – the only person who both knows this and is completely unaccounted for at the time of said crew member’s murder in front of the creepy old coach’s derelict cabin – leaves to ‘wire the PA system’ for 90 minutes. Are you serious? There isn’t even a lame red herring, like in Valentine, and Valentine is a standard-setter in how to make a shitty slasher movie.
So, there you have it. It’s a movie that tries to make a Serious Point about the intrusive nature of reality TV and its ability to foment crazed famewhores to do crazy stuff and entirely fails to actually make any kind of point about that at all except via some tacked on ‘documentary interview’ segments, which appear to have been filmed after the murders occurred yet feature several dead cast members. That kind of internal consistency and attention to detail really make Killer Movie some must-see viewing.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Love the Little Theater name drop!!!
I think you’re way off base. This movie seemed to not take itself to seriously. I think you think you’re too cute for words.
Joan, I’ll grant your point that the movie has a sense of humor. So does Behind The Mask, though, and it still manages to avoid the myriad of things I didn’t care for about Killer Movie. In fact, one of the things I even strive to imply there is that it was a good idea that I felt was not executed to its fullest potential.
And yes, I am too cute for words.