Drew Rosas and Nick Sommer’s slasher movie is a mixture of “Slaughter High” and “Scream,” where the pressure of sports amounts to a triple murder one summer that scarred a group of friends forever. Said friends were all members of a team once, and now a killer dressed as an umpire is roaming the streets murdering various individuals. The pair of directors is able to keep the killer Billy an intriguing villain as the individual roams the darkness and spends a great amount of time craftily trapping his victims. His weapon is the icing on the cake as it’s a bat covered in rusty nails, and a small slot where a large knife can slide out. This allows for some interesting kills and follows through with the baseball gimmick.
“Billy Club” pulls its influences from a lot of other horror classics and does a good job of creating something of a unique revenge thriller. There’s a very fine ode to “A Nightmare on Elm Street” as, in the opening scenes, we watch as our killer builds his own custom weapon in a dark basement. They also stage a nice ode to “Friday the 13th” involving an ATV. Thankfully, “Billy Club,” while a love letter to the slasher sub-genre, never gets goofy or over the top with its slasher. The masked maniac is a formidable foe and the demons the killer evokes with the former players of the baseball little league team is fascinating to watch. There are a lot of undertones of sexual abuse, child abuse, and repressed homosexuality, all of which were reflected by what happened in the past. “Billy Club,” while being a solid slasher film, is also a mystery that combines flashbacks and a lot of back story.
The pair of directors leads us down a path pushing together all of these puzzle pieces. And once we finally put two and two together it’s a pretty crushing tale about the pressures of competing, and how cruel children can be. There’s also a very solid supporting turn by Mark Metcalf who plays an umpire who plays a crucial role in the flashbacks. That said the film does occasionally go off the track with some confusing instances in the flashbacks, as well as an overlong scene involving a freak out with some mushrooms. I also never really cared about any of the side characters, save for a few here and there. In either case, “Billy Club” is a sharp and clever slasher film with a neat mystery, and some damn good direction behind it. I hope we can see more from Drew Rosas and Nick Sommer in the future.