GUESS WHO (2024)

New streaming on Tubi!
Directed by Amelia Moses.
Written by Ian Carpenter, Aaron Martin, Matt Wells.
Starring Keeya King, Corteon Moore, Elizabeth Saunders, Vanessa Jackson, Gabriel Darku, Amanda Ip, Andre Anthony, Michael Buie, Chimwemwe Miller, Ryan Bommarito
Check out the trailer here!!

Michael (Corteon Moore) brings his fiancée Kaitlyn (Keeya King) home to the trailer park where he grew up to meet his family. Though Kaitlyn is from a wealthy family, she is eager to meet his family and celebrate a local tradition called mummering which is a Christmas tradition celebrated in Newfoundland, Ireland, parts of the UK, and Philadelphia, of all places. Mummering consists of dressing up in costumes and going door to door asking people and having people guess who you are. As Michael, Kaitlyn and his family join the festivities, little do they know, a masked killer is in their midst.

GUESS WHO is sort of your typical slasher film save for a few aspects that make it stand out. It takes place in a trailer park and centers on a holiday I had never heard off, mummering. Now, fortunately, this is different enough to make the whole film more interesting. The main conflict in the film is between the classes. Michael is self-conscious of his trailer park history and is hesitant to share his life with Kaitlyn who comes from a much more affluent home. GUESS WHO does a pretty decent job of setting up this conflict and riding it all the way through until the end. Setting the film inside a trailer park which has all kinds of baggage attached to it involving poverty, drugs, and crime, it gives the movie a lot to play with. All of those issues arise in GUESS WHO as the young couple try to make the best of this trip.

I have to say, I have a soft spot for bag-masked killers. Ever since I saw THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN as a kid late night on a grainy bootleg Showtime feed, courtesy of a wire hanger covered in aluminum foil stuck to the back of the television, the concept of the bag-masked killer creeped me out. The killer in GUESS WHO is just as creepy, and worked for me. While the kills aren’t exactly creative, at least the killer looked pretty spooky.

Lead actress Keeya King is strong in the role of Kaitlyn. She’s sweet and spunky at times, and can put up a fight when faced with a tough situation (like when she has to deal with a bag-masked killer). Unfortunately, she is wearing a very unconvincing wig throughout the film, which distracted me quite a bit, but otherwise her performance is on point. As is lead actor, Corteon Moore as Michael. Both leads make for a personable couple to root for to make it through this treacherous night.

Despite all of that, GUESS WHO devolves into a Scooby-Doo like premise by the end as all of the mystique is sapped away by a bumbling plot by a bunch of idiots. I will give it to this film for going with a bleak ending and committing to the class war bit all the way through, but the weak revelation at the end made the decent buildup and ripe-with-potential setting feel wasted. GUESS WHO is better than most Tuni original horror films, but it is just shy of great as it doesn’t stick the landing.