GATOR FACE (2026)

New in select theaters and available on digital and streaming on
September 15th from Epic Pictures and DREAD!
Directed/Written by Padraig Reynolds.
Check out the
trailer here! !

A trio of vacationing gals encounter a building with “3-Dead Inside” written on the wall. When they go in to investigate, they encounter a live gator, a dead body, and a gator-masked man with an axe aptly named Gator Face.

Director Padraig Reynolds previously helmed RITES OF SPRING and OPEN
24 HOURS, both formidable slasher-esque horrors in their own right. With GATOR FACE, Reynolds offers up a gnarly and grisly ode to grindhousers everywhere. There’s a grit on the lens that filmed GATOR FACE. It feels like a few bloody innards got on the camera lens and it was never wiped off properly. Sure, this most likely is a filter, but GATOR FACE really is convincing as if it were some lost film from the seventies, unearthed and presented for the first time.
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Like the recently released STRAIGHT ON TIL MORNING, GATOR FACE emulates the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. It’s obvious in every scene. But unlike STRAIGHT ON TIL MORNING, it doesn’t copy scenes or details. GATOR FACE has a different kind of killer—one who uses an axe and his pet gators instead of a chainsaw. GATOR FACE simply nails the rugged and raw feel of TCM and that’s why it’s such an achievement.

Adding to the madness is a cult who worships alligators and somehow ties it in with the bible. I liked these scenes as they again are very TCM without copying it all outright. Instead of a dinner scene, there’s a ritual. But again, the look and feel of this movie, which makes the Florida landscape as hellish as Hooper did so with Texas, feels like you’ve been transferred to another horrible world.

The action is intense pretty much from the get-go. You don’t even really get to know the three gals before they are being chomped on by a gator or swacked with Gator Face’s axe. I loved the furious pace this film takes from scene one until the end as the survivor of one group runs into a new group only to have them whittled down as well. It’s this rampant pace that keeps the tension high.

All the actors involved as the soon-to-be victims of Gator Face are personable and distinct. One of the leads, Amariah Dionne who plays the panting ginger Jess is a real standout. That’s right I said ginger. I can say that. I’m a ginger myself. I’ll even put a hard R on the end. Anyway. Dionne is a strong actress, but she looks like she might need a sandwich or two as she has no muscles in her arms and looks to struggle simply holding the axe that she manages to get away from Gator Face. Scot Scurlock is solid as well as Father Eli, the leader of the Gator Cult. But all the actors feel natural, even though most of them are simply running for their lives for the entire time.

The titular Gator Face is a winner in terms of being an iconic slasher. With his strange mask and coat made from real gator skin to the grunts he lets out when he barrels after the victims at full speed. This is no Michael Myers slowly and methodically pursuing his prey. If you don’t hail ass, you’re going to be Gator Face’s or his alligators’ next victim.

This is one bloody flick too. The red stuff spatters everywhere in a bright, sticky mess.
And quite a bit of time was spent decorating the scenery and interiors, again reminiscent of the gory details Hooper and his crew produced with TCM. Add in some amazing lived in and dilapidated places like a car graveyard and what looks like houses destroyed by hurricanes, and you’ve got one amazing, gator-filled grindhouse gore-fest.