MAULER (2025)

New On Demand from One Tree Entertainment!
Directed/Written by Terence Bernie Hines.
Check out the trailer here!!

A fame and fortune-hungry group of kids hatch a hair-brained plan to win a dark web contest by breaking into a murder house where, ten years prior, a couple were killed and their child was kidnapped. In actuality, the child killed his bickering parents, and his creepy grandmother abducted him and taught him to be a religious zealot with a strict moral code. Though the kids believe the house to be empty, they don’t know that the seven foot tall sledge-hammer killer, known as the Mauler, is inside.

MAULER is a perfect case of interesting killer/typical story. The film starts out like many 80’s slashers, with some childhood trauma, which ends up being the killer’s origin. Skip ahead ten years, and the story begins, and it couldn’t be more ham-fisted. First of all, the cast of characters are flat at best, extremely annoying to be completely honest. MAULER is guilty of one of the most annoying tropes in horror; these kids bicker back and forth pretty much the entire time they are introduced, making the viewer wonder why any of them hang out together. The conflicts are all forced, simply happening to fill space and runtime between kills.

On top of the cliched soon-to-be-victims, their plan goes from reckless to absolutely inane. When these kids find out someone is inside, they come up with the stupid plan to break in, tie him up, and then steal any valuables in the house and cash it in for profit. What begins as a way to get hits on the internet quickly turns into major crimes and while some of the kids do show some reluctance, soon enough, they all go full criminal and go through with the plan. But when one of them is snatched by the Mauler, the rest have to find a way inside to rescue their friend. I get it. The goal of the movie is to get the kids inside the creepy house and trapped in with the Mauler. But the way it happens seems like it was cobbled together in writing room in about the same time it takes for a quick, morning shit.

Not only that, but the film is poorly paced. The first time we see the kids, they are pulling up, in the Mauler’s driveway, and then they argue for around twenty minutes. It’s as if none of them spoke to one another during the drive over. Two of them try to break in, but that goes pear-shaped, so they come back to the car that is just sitting in the killer’s driveway, to argue with each other for about another ten minutes. The next instance of inanity is when they get in, they just happen to find the Mauler’s journal and the kids just happen upon the page which explains everything about him and his motivations. I know this is another way to cut time and catch the kids up with the plot, but it really isn’t necessary for them to know all of this info, especially when they don’t use any of this knowledge against the Mauler later. So instead it just serves as a way to catch the viewer who slept through the first half or those with a short attention span that needs reminding.

What irks me is that the Mauler, played by Breck Cuddy, is pretty cool. Director Terence Bernie Hines keeps his face in shadow most of the time, in silhouette or backlit by ominous bright lights. Paired with his tall stature of seven feet tall and give him a sledgehammer, and this is one ominous looking killer. I also liked Cuddy’s monotone voice spouting religious gospel. The scenes of with the Mauler himself are actually pretty darn good.

I love 80’s slashers and had MAULER leaned a bit more into that retro feel—kind of like an updated version of the surreal yet haunting low fi slasher SLEDGE HAMMER, maybe this movie would have worked. Instead, they filled the film with modern pop references and social media addicted kids with no sense of morality. This is a case of a bad movie surrounding a potentially cool killer. The cliched story elements, the annoying cast, their inane motivation, and the whole dumb reason they are thrown into this predicament is what bogs MAULER down, down, down.