Halloweed

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Under the Radar

I hate to say it, 'cause usually I try to be quite fair when it comes to my reviews, but this has got to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. What could have been a fun stoner horror comedy turned out to be a perverse, badly written and desperate cry for attention. It's the kind of movie that tries to rely on shock value to draw it's audience in, but it all just comes across as horrible.

Basically, the movie centers on two stoner half-brothers, Joey (Simon Rex - of the BAD 'Scary Movie' films) and Trent (Shannon Brown - some bike messenger from 'Friends'). They share the same mother, but Trent's father (Tom Sizemore!? WTF, man, seriously?) turns out to be a serial killer, sentenced to death. Afterward, Trent decides he needs to move away to a little town called Mooseheart. Trent falls in love with a badly written female character there while Joey gets a gig selling weed through Danny Trejo, and with the help of Jason Mewes - the only two known names through the movie.

Eventually (almost an hour into the hour and forty minute film), killings begin to happen in the small town, involving some guy dressed in a baby costume who somehow manages to giggle just like a real baby. I guess it's supposed to be creepy, but my mind can't land on "creepy" when I'm too busy questioning how the hell he's doing that. At least in 'Scream', you see the reveal of the voice-changer. Here, we don't get shit. But, that's not even the worst of it... (Tom Sizemore?)

There's all these undertones of sexism and racism throughout the movie as well. Take the two black cops who get told by the mayor's son that he "owned them", and they do nothing but get walked all over. Or at the father's execution, there's a bimbo in the back getting off to his very presence, a true WTF moment. I had to wonder if I was watching a dream sequence.

They threw... *sigh*... Tom Sizemore in here for a brief cameo in which he plays the most unpleasant of characters. Just a dirty old pervert who's getting off to a photo of what I assume to be one of his victims. That's bad enough, but they really just let him do that? I mean, I know he's gonna be executed but... was this supposed to be our assurance he was gonna end up in Hell or something? These brief cameos continue with Trejo (who just does what he does, and I admire him for that, so we're gonna leave his ass the hell alone) and Mewes (just playing a dumber version of Jay - and I HATE saying that 'cause I'm a Jay & Silent Bob fan!)

In looking for a place to live, the two main characters find some dirty old man, renting for cheap. His name is Lloyd, and he's played by Robert Craighead. The character seems to relish in being this dirty old man, and we see him just be perverted toward little girls and apparently it's supposed to be funny. I mean, there's raunchy comedy, and then there's that. A good raunchy comedy will have some sort of underlying message by the end. Taking 'Superbad' as an example, it shows us Seth seemingly jumping through hoops to get himself laid. But at the end, he recognizes that he was a jerk, letting her know that he understood she didn't deserve it. This was just... "look at my penis" - the end. And again, apparently this was the comedy aspect.

Aside from everything else, the most important thing here is probably the title. If you read a title that just says 'Halloweed', I think it's fair to assume that it's a stoner Halloween movie... y'know... with Halloween IN it! The most we really get is that there's a killer that shows up maybe 3 times AFTER the first hour, and you can tell it takes place in the Fall, nearing the Holiday. I don't think the movie understood what it was trying to do at all, and it turned out to be a pretty hot mess on boredom, tasteless humor, and punchlines that not only fall flat, but go through the floor. In all honesty, I didn't wanna continue after the opening scene, but I somehow managed to muster up the curiosity to see how bad this got. And, well.... we have a history-maker here, ladies and gentlemen. With 0, count 'em 0 redeeming qualities (not even Trejo could save it, but like I say, he's just doin' his thing) we have our very first flat out, straight up:

1/5

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