This
film must have had some awkward casting calls. Someone had to explain to
applicants it is the story of a group of psychotic horror movie-makers who are
killing off their cast-members for real. Don’t worry, it will be a perfectly
safe shoot in remote Hill Country, PA. Yet, they obviously had no trouble
getting thesps to sign on. Likewise, the scarcity of acting gigs causes Serena
Brooks to overlook a lot of weirdness in screenwriter-director Michael Walker’s
Cut Shoot Kill (trailer here), which releases
today on VOD.
Brooks
is not crazy about doing a grisly slasher movie, but at least she is the star.
She will also appear opposite Blake Stone, a semi-famous former child-star.
However, the rest of her co-stars seem to mysteriously vanish immediately after
their final scenes. Stone assures her the producers are just extremely
cost-conscious and the director Alabama Chapman is unusually intense, but Brooks
soon suspects there is some involuntary method-acting going on.
To
its credit, CSK does not waste our
time with fake metaness. We won’t have to sit through interminable it’s-all-just-a-fake-except-its-really-real
switcheroos. No “buts” about it, Chapman and his crew are truly killing the supporting
players. Fortunately, Brooks is the star, but her predecessor’s fate is not so reassuring.
Walker
offers some sly commentary on the actor’s myopically neurotic mindset, but in
general, CSK is pretty standard
stuff. As such, it is a rather dramatic departure from his issue-oriented
thriller, The Maid’s Room. Although
less ambitious, CSK is far more honest
about what it is and what it means.
As
Brooks, Alexandra Socha makes a decent final girl. Phil Burke plays off her
quite effectively as the unrepentantly cynical Stone. He easily gets the film’s
best line and makes the most of it. Alex Hurt is appropriately intense as the
murderously driven Chapman, but most of the rest of the homicidal crew are interchangeable
stock characters.
