MOVIE THEATER MASSACRE (2023)

New On Demand from Cranked Up Films!
Directed/Written by Ian Courtney.
Check out the trailer here!!

The employees of a small Detroit movie theater are quite sad that the theater will be closing at the end of the week. But on top of looming unemployment and quickly diminishing supplies like candy and toilet paper that won’t be reordered, the part-time workers also have to deal with a masked killer who is murdering employees one by one.

MOVIE THEATER MASSACRE is a low budgeter shot on an iPhone that has a heart of gold that you can see from a mile away. It is a film made out of love and despair that the theater-going experience may have been forever altered after the pandemic. It is a film made to bring light to the love of movies and the love of going to the movies that not everyone has, but if you do, then you’re definitely a friend of mine. So despite the film’s flaws, MOVIE THEATER MASSACRE has a whole lot of charm and heart and a big love for going to the movies.

Unfortunately, this is a review and not an advert for the intention of MOVIE THEATER MASSACRE, so for the sake of pointing out the bad with the good, I’m going to have shift to criticism mode. And unfortunately, MOVIE THEATER MASSACRE is very dated. Not only because it references the pandemic heavily and that was around four years ago and honestly, no one wants to be reminded of those dark days. It’s too soon. But it’s also dated because it feels like it was written by someone who really, really, really reeeeeeeaaalllly liked CLERKS and the rest of Kevin Smith movies. This film is full of Smithian banter trying to be Tarantinoian, but never getting to the slick and clever level of a Tarantino flick. And while I can appreciate a nonsensical banter session between co-workers as much as the next guy, the trick is to make the conversations either A) funny, B) interesting, but most definitely C) intrinsic to the plot of the movie. None of that happens, sadly, as within the first fifteen minutes, we are treated to basically the same conversation by two different sets of people talking about the demise of the movie theater industry. Once is good enough, but this conversation comes up basically throughout the entire film. It’s basically what everyone is talking about, which I understand might be the case in the really-real world, but you just can’t have such repetitive moments in a movie that is supposed to entertain as well as give a slice of life glimpse into the lives of employees of a closing theater.

On top of the not so clever script, the story makes very little sense by the end. It feels like a movie that was very fun to make. It probably felt pretty good to film inside a theater, working for a cause, and goofing off with a bunch of friends and like-minded people, but you’ve got to have some kind of sensical throughway going on in your movie. While the murders aren’t necessarily scary, they are pretty brutal with the masked killer all in black stabbing folks with what looks to be a very retractable blade and blood a floweth-ing. And while the actual massacre where the killer goes nuts on the crowd might have been interesting, the sweet and harmless tone of the film simply doesn’t support it, especially since shootings in theaters is something to this day, scares the hell out of people. To see it not only being treated so whimsically is very off-putting. Adding to the wonky tone is the fact that in the very next scene, people seem to forget that there are actual dead bodies littered in the theater and everyone gathers for another charming, heartwarming scene of movie theater appreciation. I mean, the corpses of their co-workers aren’t even cold yet, and these guys are joking around like nothing has happened. On top of that, how the killer is taken care of and who the hell the killer is isn’t even answered?

But the filmmakers were able to get Linnea Quigley to make a cameo as a spiritualist who makes house calls on a very, very short notice. And it was fun seeing LeJon Woods, who was last seen in BEEZEL and seems to be charting quite the horror resume these days. Again, watch this movie for the feels it gives. It doesn’t deliver on a sensical plot or resolution and even the murders aren’t that good. But it will warm the heart and I support the filmmakers for the wonderful intentions of their actions, even if the final product wasn’t my cup of popcorn.