An axe murderer named Karpenter (Tim Nydell) escapes from a mental institution the night before Halloween. He then strolls into a small town and begins hacking women up with his trusty axe. Afterwards, he sets his sights on a Halloween party that offers up plenty of axe fodder.
If you can’t already tell by the title and premise, this is pretty much a tribute to John Carpenter’s immortal classic Halloween. Director Christian Ackerman has definitely studied Carpenter’s playbook, but also sprinkles in a couple of unique touches as well. Most of the kills occur offscreen, but we do get a couple of pretty good decapitations, a fire poker in the eye, and a face gets ripped off. It’s all fairly standard stuff, and yet it remains a thoroughly entertaining exercise all in all.
Look, I’m not going to go out on a limb and say it’s perfect. The filmmakers kind of overdo it with all the drone shots (a trend that crops up more and more in these low budget slashers) and there’s too much unnecessary slow motion. On the plus side, it’s only an hour long (actually, it’s closer to forty-five minutes if you don’t count the extended closing credits complete with outtakes and bloopers) and has no qualms about getting right down to business.
The thing that really elevates this from the glut of similar slashers clogging up my algorithm on Tubi is its sense of humor. Some of the comedic moments work surprisingly well. The best sequence is a clever subversion on the old standby, the shower scene. I don’t want to spoil it for you because it results in the biggest laugh of the movie, but definitely keep an eye out for it. (The constant merengue music on the soundtrack just adds to the WTF factor.) Touches like that make Karpenter a cut above the rest.
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