If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Write about it. “The WeedHacker Massacre” (2024) originates in the 1800s in Red Eye, Texas. The Gunter brothers, Dufus (Allen Grainger) and Rufus (Paul James) got into a dispute over their hemp farm that ended in bloodshed. The homicidal brother’s descendants are not much better when they slaughter a group of Earth Wind Fest goers in 2014 while trying to retrieve their cash and weed, but the story of that fateful massacre gets mangled in its adaptation to the big screen. Ten years later, when a film crew shoots on the site of the original massacre, one of the 2014 victims, Willy Wonder (David Trevino), discovers that the movie cast him in the story as the killer. Can Willy clear his name? I could probably sue for false advertising since the trailer is funnier, and a lot of the trailer scenes do not appear in the movie.
Sometimes making a film is the filmmaker, cast and crew’s reward, but then there should also be a warning label for everyone else thinking about seeing the movie. There is so much good content. Losing time to a film that really needs viewers to be invested personally in the project exacerbates the situation. Just like everyone deserves credit when a film is a success, everyone deserves credit for making a film that manages to have no good qualities except the fun that they had making it. The trailer for “The WeedHacker Massacre” made it seem as if the movie was more about the making of a weak tea slasher flick that gets superseded with a more fearsome real-life slasher. I love fake documentaries meets found footage. This movie is supposed to bad, but never in a million years did I think that it was possible for a movie to verge on unintelligible. It is almost impossible to distinguish the characters, the period, the events unfolding as reality in the movie from the fake movie or the documentary about the movie. It is only when a camera or other obvious filmmaking equipment is around that it is clear. Also, the movie within a movie is supposed to be a remake, but there is not a trace of the prior movies other than the dialogue. It is a gaping hole in an already Swiss cheese narrative.
The opening has the substance of a skit as the two nineteenth century brothers waste no time in secularizing the Cain and Abel sibling rivalry to set the stage. As the audience watches it, is it supposed to be real or a recreation of the past? I’m guessing the prior. It then switches to an interview with Sheriff Dancing Shoes (Allen Danzinger), the only nod to the documentary portion of the film in the entire story. The trailer showed the director, Rene Carpenter (Bobbie Grace), and crew being interviewed about production, and honestly, it was funnier than anything in “The WeedHacker Massacre.” It then fast-forwards to 2014 when the townsfolk are on a killing rampage. One is called Digger (Parrish Randall), which is unfortunate because it sounds like another word considered a slur in civilized circles, and all the Gunters have a thick Southern drawl, which is why it takes longer to realize the actual word spoken. It is an unfortunate, hopefully unintentional trick of the ear. There is absolutely no character development. The only thing that makes them distinguishable is gender and appearance.
As a fan of slashers, I can’t believe that I’m going to write the following: it feels like killing for killing sake, and the kills are perfunctory. To be fair, I kind of checked out and started multitasking early in the proceeding, but the Gunters want to kill the festival goers, the movie’s cast and crew and each other. Why? Because it is a slasher movie, goddamnit (cue reading it as Parker Posey in “Party Girl”). I dunno, and maybe that is part of the mystery, which facilitates zoning out and not getting invested in the story. It seems like the Gunters are critics too, but they prefer stabbing over writing.
The biggest surprise is the protagonist’s identity: Willy Wonder, an aspiring actor from the Bronx. Are they making fun of Timothee Chalamet? Apparently, Willy’s hair is verging on magical, charms everyone and makes him immune to a lot of weapons, thus his survival. He befriends Pokerface Gunter (Sean Reyna), an abused Gunter who resembles Leatherface and enjoys killing people with the titular tool, sadly without any Lady Gaga music. Along the way, Pokerface connects with Willy then holds him captive for ten years as his only friend, which is played for laughs. Because of all the killings, there is some confusion within the story among the characters regarding who is killing who and why. Willy’s exasperated reaction to discovering that his brother in spirit is mildly funny, but not enough to elicit a chuckle. There is a long black and white tangent about Pokerface’s origin story, and just when it does not seem possible to check out more, it is. A riff on Wilson from “Cast Away” (2020) would be funnier if it was not a reference from a quarter of a century ago.
When Willy sees the film shoot and Candy Kersey (Molly Sakonchick), another survivor of the 2014 massacre, it sparks his memory and feelings. Candy seems like a character with a lot of potential on paper: a journalist, a traumatized survivor and a solid fighter. The flashback to her days in an asylum seemed promising, but it is a one and done video clip so no sustainable found footage elements. Candy’s psychologist, Dr. Wu (Thep Tan), is a paid shill to encourage her to retraumatize herself for the sake of a crap movie. While it is generous to call it funny considering that I never even thought of laughing, if there was humor, it was deeply embedded in the shenanigans that occur during the shoot: the needless on set repetition, the lack of money, the cynicism, the nepotism. For example, Cher (Shera Eichler) is a human echo and not always at the right time for the right person. DJ the Producer (Ron Oliveira) gets a great monologue about the state of movies in the twenty-first century without missing a beat of wonder in his voice. The movie improves slightly as it approaches the denouement, but the eleventh-hour relationship between Willy and Candy is perfunctory.
There is a low hanging fruit bit with the local pastors as they take turns threatening production. A better skit is the post credit scene with a commercial sequence featuring a TV Attorney (Jeannie Carter-Cruz), which is preceded with a rip off “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) denouement that holds the key to the film’s only chemistry, which is between Willy and Poker Face. Though it has spoof moments, “The WeedHacker Massacre” is not inherently a spoof movie, and if it was intended to be one, then the references are too obtuse to glean or too obvious to be clever outside of vaguely honoring the fiftieth anniversary of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974), which deserves better.
If the people behind “The WeedHacker Massacre” got what they wanted out of making their movie, that is all that matters. The acting tone does not change to indicate context. The story is more preoccupied with doing a lot than truly world building and creating memorable characters. While their love of the movies and horror is undeniable, to make fun of something, understanding of what makes horror movies great must be so bone deep that the humor lands. It would make a better play because then only the right people would see and support it, but under the scrutiny of wider attention, it is a waste of time.
