After the slaughter of her cellmates by the psycho axe murderer Freddy Palmer, Cassie (Andrea Martina) has been stewing in a mental ward. Unjustly blamed for the murders, she awaits sentencing, but is able to escape to a nearby warehouse where an all-girl rock band is practicing. They vow to help clear her name and take her back to the woods to collect evidence on the killer. Of course, Freddy has escaped from the government lab and is stalking the forest once again.
This is another one of those deals that feels like it could’ve been one decent ninety-minute movie, but the filmmakers cut it in half and padded everything out with redundant scenes from the previous installments and turned it into two flimsy flicks. This one kicks off with the last five minutes of Part 4 and there’s a long stretch where our heroine relates a bunch of flashbacks to the rock band. I will say that when Axegrinder 5 is focused on showing new material, it works rather well. I especially dug the all-girl rock band angle as it makes the film feel like an episode of Josie and the Pussycats directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis.
The film’s attempts at intentional humor often fall flat. The stuff with the weirdo flower-eating cousin (perhaps a nod to the original Little Shop of Horrors?) is lame. The gore is OK though. We get assorted axing, gut spilling, heart ripping (and eating), hand hacking, and decapitation. Alas, the CGI blood splatters were unnecessary, seeing how the kills were already kind of juicy to begin with.
The performances are solid this time around. Martina once again essays the Final Girl role with aplomb, and Kaitlyn Furey is fun as the leader of the rock n’ roll band. (Especially when she tries to “seduce” the killer.) it was also nice seeing Veronica Ricci returning as the sexy psychic “Claire Voyant”, although I wish she had a little bit more to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment