★★
“Better dead than redhead.”
Written, directed by, and starring husband and wife team Sam and Johnna Hodge, this is the kind of film it would be easy to deride as poverty-row garbage from the bottom drawer. There’s precious little plot, some of the performances are painfully amateur, and it seems to exist mostly as a show-reel for spraying around corn syrup with red food colouring in it. And yet… If Chris and I made a movie – something we have discussed – it might well end up being not too dissimilar to this. On the other hand, if we had a spare $55,000 lying around – the budget here, according to the IMDb – we’d probably go on a nice holiday instead.
Autumn Blacksmith (Hodge) survived being abducted and tortured by infamous psychopath Oscar Sawyer (Stinnett), finally escaping after killing him. However, the experience left her severely traumatized, and the slightest unfortunate interaction with any man is sufficient to push her over the edge into a murderous rage. Cue the corn syrup. Rinse, repeat for 90-odd minutes, until the end credits roll. Occasional hallucinations of Sawyer returning from the grave to haunt her, and a brief attempt by her therapist (Holland) to check in, offer a small touch of variety. The West Virginia cops, led by Detective Rogers (Robinson), are not exactly Sherlock Holmes. Then again, locals are remarkably chill about Autumn’s spree. The bartender where she kills her first victim says of him, “He was always an asshole.”
I was reminded of Michael and Anne Paul, another husband and wife film-making duo. They made Roman’s Bride, where the red-headed wife also goes on a killing spree. I think that worked a bit better, because its lead actress had an innocence about her, that provided an interesting contrast to her savagery. Here, Autumn is more blatantly mad, to the point you wonder why any man would try to chat her up. As a viewer, you’re never brought along on the journey into insanity. The way some of the local community end up assisting with, or even active participants in, her murders could have been used to provide another twist to the narrative. Nah. Open another bottle of Karo instead.
Technically, it’s okay: the camera gets pointed in the right direction, it doesn’t succumb to underlit scenes, and the audio is fine. The soundtrack, also by Sam Hodge (not a surprise), has a nice throwback vibe, sounding like it was ripped off an eighties video nasty. But there is no real sense of progression or development, and the ending feels particularly sudden, going to the end credits immediately after she has disembowelled her final victim, a peeping Tom. We’re very little forward from where we were after her first murder. A sequel is in production though, so it appears there was enough of a market for this kind of thing. Will I watch it? [Sighs heavily] Yeah. I suspect I probably will.
Dir:Johnna Hodge, Sam Hodge
Star: Johnna Hodge, Ashley Stinnett, Will A. Holland, Travis Robinson