Vicious Fun Review: Nothing ‘Fun’ About It!

Vicious Fun , Nothing  ‘Fun’ About It

Vicious Fun

Starring Evan Marsh, .Amber Goldfarb, Ari Millen

Directed  by  Cody Callahan

Rating: *

A  hit  on the streaming platform, Vicious Fun  is  no fun at all. Unless   you think  stabbing people in their eye and watching the  eye come  out of its socket with the sharp instrument  , slashing throats  , pounding nails on foreheads and  other bloody activities are  fun.

I have to admit, though, this is the first film I’ve seen where  serials killings and  killers are treated as a joke.When  we  meet them at a conference  in the backroom of  a pub(which looks like  a set representing a  pub, and goes well with the purposely stagy  tone of  the  shudder  inference) they are  all sitting around telling each other  about how many they’ve killed since they  last convened and why one of them  enjoys eating his victims body parts  after  killing them, the other kills and revives and kills the same  victim over  and over again.

The  debasement  of  human value is  savage. You can’t  treat  human beings as  trash unless it is in a trashy film.

The  film’s  young witless protagonist Joel (Evan Marsh), a “horror critic”   is the  kind of nerd  who always  gets  into trouble. One  night while  drinking himself silly he stumbles  into  a  serial-killers’  convention.Jeol’s  rather pathetic attempts to prove himself  as one of them is vaguely funny, though not amusing enough for us to bear the maelstrom of mayhem that  is unleashed .

 The  film is wall-to-wall carpeted with creepy violence, all done in a  tone that  suggests  everyone on screen is  having fun, why  not you the audience? I  am  sure there  are   some out there who  enjoy the sight of  blood , puke  and pukey bloodshed. But to others,  the  gore  gets to be  a bore  .The serial  killers have faces that have sociopaths  written on  them. Whoever said  not to judge  a book by its cover hasn’t seen this film.

Getting back to the  plot, the bloodsoaked action moves  from the above-mentioned pub  into a police station where we  meet the most cartoonish cops  you’ve ever  seen. These protectors  of  the law are so eye-rolling daft, you wonder if they are meant to be characters  in a spoof on the law as  the protector  of  the  citizen.

 Citizen Nerd Joel gets an interesting   foil in Carrie(Amber Goldfarb)  a serialkiller-buster  with what one  of  the psychopaths  describes as  a “lesbian   haircut”.It is interesting to see how Carrie’s character carries  itself from the  pigsty of  sanguinary perverts  to  the  role of  a vigilante  out to snuff all serial killers  from the city  .That Carrie  ends up being as vicious as  the killers is  an irony that sits well in this douche bag  horror-comedy.

 The  film has  a splashy blotchy  look , as though  the  frames were soaked in pink and red colours and then left to dry in  the sun which,incidentally we  never  get to see in this  nagging nocturnal  blood-fest where the  hero  pukes  every time  a violent crime happens.We are just about able to control our  rising aversion to  the  swelling tides   of trashy perversion.

The  question I want to ask is, why such a steep  rise  in America in horror  films during these Covid times?Do people enjoy watching victims being slashed and stabbed  as a manifestation  of their  inner frustrations?