Month: September 2023

Every now and then we get a movie that lives up to the promise of its title, such as Everything Everywhere All At Once, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and others. These films promise a lot with their titles and then deliver on the goods with hardly any missteps from beginning to end. The Australian horror picture Beaten To Death certainly lives up to the promise of its title and then some. And man, oh man, is this a bloody good time at the movies.

Written by Sam Curtain & Benjamin Jung-Clarke and directed by Curtain (The Slaughterhouse Killer, Blood Hunt), Beaten To Death follows the gruesome and shocking beating of Jack, played by Thomas Roach (who also starred in Blood Hunt), an unassuming man who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people in the Australian Outback.

It unfolds in a non-linear way, bouncing back and forth with the past and present, as it presents more and more information about this mysterious man, how he got himself and his dead wife Rachel, played by Nicole Tudor, into this situation, and if he’ll survive long enough to get through it all and find safety. Spoiler alert just based on its title, but he doesn’t.

In the grand tradition of Australian exploitation movies, including Wake In Fright, Razorbacks, Patrick, Mad Max, and others, Beaten To Death has a simple premise — one man’s survival in the criminal underground with people who live on the outskirts of society — that’s explored to its most logical conclusion — it doesn’t end well for anyone. 

While the film is loaded with bloody and brutal violence, it presents it in such a well-crafted piece of genre cinema. Director Curtain has such a strong command of the camera and editing that really feels artful and considered. The audience is placed into Jack’s outlook for survival that he overcomes so much for revenge. It’s almost as if violence places you in a dark place where you’ll do anything just to live and find safety — even kill.

In addition, the Outback gives it a sense of place, as a number of make-shift and dingy homes make up the backdrop. And with long stretches of wilderness, as Jack travels through rough landscapes, it feels that not only a backwoods family (also known as ​​“bogans” in Australia) is out to kill him, but also Mother Nature. 

Meanwhile, it’s a harsh, dark, and ugly film, in terms of subject matter, but photographed and edited with immaculate and sharp detail that make it hard to turn away from the screen, despite all the brutality on display. Curtain has a good eye for genre filmmaking. Beaten To Death is sadistic, gruesome, and smartly made and constructed, while it really pushes the limits of brutality in cinema. But beware, this movie isn’t for everyone, but the title alone is a warning to a potential audience.

Chad (Spencer Harrison Levin) has a big following on social media and his pranks are legendary. He gets hundreds of thousands of views on each of his videos and the things that he livestreams are more outrageous every time.

Hearing about a place called Devil’s Manor where a satanic cult was meant to have stayed, Chad gathers his friends; Steve (Michael Bonini), Jennifer (Taneisha Figueroa) and Spencer (Cameron Vitosh) to investigate and hopefully get the biggest audience of their lives. However, somebody else is watching them and one by one they get picked off until Chad has to decide whether his life or his platform is more important.

#ChadGetsTheAxe is a horror comedy directed by Travis Bible and co-written by Kemerton Hargrove. Like other social media horror movies such as Spree and Friend Request, #ChadGetsTheAxe shows that there’s still something to say about the media format in the horror genre.

Starting out as horror movies often do, gathering a group of people in a house where something sinister may have happened is always a good albeit cliched premise. It also feels like the found footage genre has been done to death by now.

However, #ChadGetsTheAxe is helped along in its knowing set up by the constant stream of comments from the people watching the video. Something that may have been a little distracting becomes part of the narrative as the audience watching at home can laugh along just as horror audiences usually do, while the comments reflect what they’re all thinking.

Chad is also arguably the most annoying member of the gang, however thanks to Levin’s performance, the audience may start to feel for him as they realise that his need for social media attention has left him very much alone. It would have been an easy thing to set up a group of self-absorbed social media stars only to watch them die, but the film’s commentary on the nature of social media, horror movies and even found footage is well done.

#ChadGetsTheAxe may feel like a generic slasher on the surface, but the more savvy members of the audience will get something more thought provoking than they’d first considered.