Teenager Abbie is the daughter of a famous slasher killer. When she has to take over the “family business” she is forced to face what she wants with her life.
One of the best aspects of the horror genre is its self-reflexive. Horror writers, directors, and fans are incredibly aware of the tropes of whatever sub-genre tonight’s film might find itself in. The best creators use this to their advantage, knowing the audience knows, using the familiar trappings to inform their story and characters, even if not directly commenting. The slasher subgenre may be the most as satirizing themselves, sending up their genre while still delivering the goods. Scream is the most well-known, publicly popular, effectively deconstructing the ins and outs in six films and a TV show.
Bloody Axe Wound, premiering on Shudder as an exclusive after a short theatrical run at the tail end of 2024, follows more in the vein of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon; positing a world where slasher villains exist and work within to play with the genre. Within writer-director Matthew John Lawrence, whose last film was the surprising delight Uncle Peckerhead, aims to explore the effects of a slasher on those around the victim, family dynamics, and finding oneself even amid a more significant situation. There’s a great concept here. But it’s tonally inconsistent and often half-thought.
Abbie, played by Sari Arambulo, desperately wants to take over her father’s business. He, Billy Burke under thick make-up, runs a slasher-only video store, with a twist. Nearly all the films are of himself, and other killers, on their murder sprees. He’s Roger Bladecut, a Jason-like killer in look, style, and backstory. Reeling from his latest resurrection, Abbie takes on the slasher role. She chooses not to simply find and kill the doomed teens, but to ingrain herself into the high school first.
In doing so, she gets to know them, woo unexpected love, finds herself, and questions her dad’s devotion to killing all of her new friends. Bloody Axe Wound reminds us these victims are people with hopes and dreams, and none of those dreams are to be skewered by a harpoon. Abbie questions her family’s destiny and her role in it. It’s an interesting dynamic for a slasher film to explore parental expectations and the loss of a former parent-child closeness as the child approaches adulthood, even if only in idea over execution.
But with that, there’s an uncertainty in what the audience is meant to take away. Chris Nash’s In A Violent Nature, last year’s slasher subversion, asked the audience to question their complacency in watching brutal murders. It does mostly seriously, even if providing 2024’s gnarliest kill. But Lawrence’s film is more comedic: Abbie is a fish-out-of-water new student, Jason filling the role of a suburban dad, along with the expected tropes, direct humor, and the stereotypes state “comedy”. A favorite running joke is a triple-stack of stereotypes, Abbie’s sassy, gay, Black best friend who is desperate to appear in one of the films via a series of costumes: concerned student, angry parent, Crazy-Ralph-cosplayed-harbinger. So the drama feels misplaced.
In addition, whatever we’re meant to take away is deluded in the film for not fleshing out the concepts. For example: Jeffrey Dean Morgan is in the movie! …. For twenty seconds in the opening scene. Initially, he’s set up as a foil for Bladecutter, a new guy taking the spotlight; bringing something fresh to a stagnating serial killing. But he vanishes and is barely mentioned again. He feels he’s going to be a big portion, something to drive the elder Bladecutter, and provide depth to Abbie’s story with a parallel story: what her father does, the implications, how he deals, and how she’s different. I wonder if they got Morgan, but the situation changed that he can be on set for an hour, and instead of recasting just cut the rest of him.
It’s unbalanced, and the void of the possible missing other half of the concept weakens what did make it through. Missing what seems to be half the idea, the remainder is often surface-level and half-thought. Of course, I put on my disbelief suspenders when watching or reading something that uses a strong concept, but some logical inconsistencies didn’t quite work. Characters are both aware and oblivious to the world they live in. There’s a strange comfortableness and shrugging to the presented amount of bodies over generations. Characters state the feelings of so many friends dying but move through their lives as if nothing is wrong. One would think this amount of murder would create a sort of hell hole, or a faded town, such as Springwood in Freddy’s Dead. But the adults watch the movies with their own children being murdered with apathy until there’s suddenly a scene featuring angry parents and students. We’re supposed to care for the effects of the violence, as Abbie seems to, but when it’s only lip service to the people affected, it’s hard to make it to the audience.
On the blood and gore quotient, despite the expectations from the title, Bloody Axe Wound, the overall film is relatively tame. Yes, blood spills, but there are only a few impressive blood gags. They look good though.
Bloody Axe Wound is a disappointment, coming short of a great concept.