“Bloody Axe Wound” (2024) is a coming-of-age horror dramedy set in the fictional town of Clover Falls. Abbie (Sari Arambulo) is desperate to take over the family business, a video store that offers homemade snuff films of brutal murders to oblivious fellow locals, Her dad, Roger Bladecut (Billy Burke), will not allow it because she is a girl. When he finally gives her a chance, she decides to get closer to her targets to improve her strategic advantage, but it has the opposite effect. Will Abbie carve her own path forward?
For the adopted daughter of a brutal murderer, Abbie is a charming protagonist/narrator. In her second feature film, Arambulo must be relatable enough to keep the audience on her side without shortchanging the audience on the calculated killings, and she succeeds. Writer and director Matthew John Lawrence is one of the rare men who can write from a woman’s point of view and nails the goofiness of the age demographic instead of creating a film with people in their thirties pretending to be teens. Abbie is a sheltered striver who mostly spends time in her dad’s world so when she meets other people and makes friends, she is conflicted once she realizes that she likes her potential victims. She spends so much time trying to achieve a goal that she never considers whether it is worth the effort until she gets what she wants. Think “The Bridge on the River Kwai” (1957) for women in male-dominated industries. Is she perpetrating values that uplift or would destroy her if she was not aligned with it?
The world building is a little shaky, but suspending disbelief is worth it. If your brain stays on, you will naturally question how the town can enjoy watching these movies without figuring out that they are watching real life murders of the people around them. “Bloody Axe Wound” does not give the impression that movie renters have put two and two together. Also it is unclear how Roger Bladecut’s mythology overlaps with the store’s other horror movie favorite, Butch Slater (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), who also brutally murders people in real life for profit, but maybe it is just an excuse to have a Morgan cameo, which is fair.
Roger Bladecut is a killer compilation of horror franchises from “Psycho” (1960), “Friday the 13th,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and even a neat little shout out to “Halloween” (1978). Burke, who is unrecognizable in this role, played the police chief and kind of hot dad in the “Twilight” franchise, and comes across as a blue-collar man proud of his traditions and trying to survive. Like many parents, Roger has never reflected on his chosen vocation and is on automatic, but he loves his little girl and is frustrated that she cannot just do her job, especially when they are not doing well financially. Of course, it is impossible not to see the character as a metaphor for all the dads who reinforce self-destructive policies without thinking of the impact on themselves and those they love—a generational divide that grows if the adult child strays too far from home. Roger is more sympathetic than his real-life counterparts, which would include Presidon’t supporters, because he is comparatively sensitive and reflective. While he demonizes normal teenagers, he still has love for his daughter and does not turn on her even when she breaks the rules that he upholds but does not serve him.
“Bloody Axe Wound” is not just a morality tale, but an ode to the brick-and-mortar local video rental shops that whet the appetite of future filmmakers and cinephiles and a genre of classic horror that people still adore today. There is also meta commentary about the lengths that people will go to become famous and the ramifications of media violence on ordinary teens. Lawrence manages to moralize without ruining the fun. Buckets of blood, impaling and disembowelments are on full display, but Lawrence also humanizes most of the victims. On one hand, the narrative is wildly unrealistic, but in the real world, there are mass shootings with a similar parade of funerals. Maybe this premise is more normal because the inaction makes sense in a supernatural world where people can rise from the dead if they are buried in a specific location.
Lawrence’s gift for creating sympathetic characters extends beyond killers, and the most hilarious moments are when the two groups clash. The supporting characters and guarded teens clearly have lives outside the framework of the horror genre that the Bladecut family has envisioned them in. Sam Crane (Molly Brown), a drummer, is auditioning for final girl status and a place in Abbie’s heart unwittingly playing cupid with a drumstick. Clove Falls High School is unique as a place without cliques that fall along the usual lines of popularity or extracurricular activities. Clarinet player Patty (Margot Anderson-Song) has more bite than the average nerd. Fellow band mate and artist Billy (Taylor Seupel) gets short shrift as more of an archetype. Izzy (Angel Theory) is a dance enthusiast who never stops moving. As a masked killer, Abbie is confident, but as herself, she is easily cowed, awkward and fumbling. She transforms from a mover and shaker in the movie biz to a misfit who does not need all those trappings of power. These teens endow her with the gift of the human experience and its elemental joys. Abbie discovers traits in herself that she did not even know that she had. When she tells her father’s story as a scary tale around a campfire, it becomes a link to her own feeling as an outsider instead of an exclusive insider.
Lawrence alludes to a lot of deep concepts, but if moviegoers are not interested, they are easy to miss. If he had delved into them further and dug into this world’s details, “Bloody Axe Wound” would become a classic. Lawrence accomplishes what every mass shooter tries and fails at doing in their manifestos. He shows the emotional pain that allegedly traps killers in a cycle of violence but also links it to the people who never manifest that loneliness into murder yet choose professions that make them feel powerful but could be just as damaging even if it causes no physical harm and exploits people for profit. When people self-medicate through fame or dehumanizing others, it exiles them from life.
There is one sad, subversive moment in “Bloody Axe Wound” that does not happen in any horror movie. A formerly exuberate victim wants to die and does not fight the killer because that person does not want to survive under the conditions that this world imposed on her. It is the most twenty-first century take on the horrors of this world and does more in a few seconds than “The Room Next Door” (2024), which took hours to convey and never nails. After all the horror that people endure, living becomes expensive and a futile struggle.
“Bloody Axe Wound” is a cute slasher with a few messages if a moviegoer wants to look deeper. Though not as philosophical and meditative as “In a Violent Nature” (2024), it finds an upbeat and entertaining way to tackle existential problems. Without the heavy handedness of an after school special, the plight of teenagers and working-class families uses tropes to examine blind spots of quotidian atrocities that debilitate the spirit and body.
