Killer Book Club (2023) - A movie with a protagonist so bad, I was rooting for the killer
Title: Killer Book Club
Year: 2023
Director: Carlos Alonso Ojea
IMDb score: 4.6/10
Personal score: 2/10
Genre: Slasher (?), horror, teen horror, thriller
Summary: Eight horror-loving friends fight for their lives when a killer clown who seems to know the grim secret they share begins to pick them off, one by one.
One-sentence review: I want my time back. The protagonist is literally more unlikable than the killer(s).
Watch if:
You want a quick, dumb flick where you don't have to think
You have low blood pressure and want to feel angry (getting angry raises your blood pressure)
You're having a movie night with someone you hate and you want them to suffer
Don't watch if:
You value your time
You like it when your movies have a likable protagonist
You don't like subtitles
Does an animal die in this movie?
Thankfully, no. There are no animals in the movie.
Summary:
This movie is bad. It's unoriginal, predictable, campy and has the most unlikable protagonist I've seen in a while. Just to give you a quick recap of why our 'heroine' is so horrible: 1) she writes a book about another girl's trauma without consent (just changes the names but keeps her literal life story the same), which causes the girl to snap. 2) Her boyfriend doesn't like her hanging out with another guy (let's call him 'simp', because the movie does) so she immediately gets pissy and snaps at him. 3) She literally has sex with the same guy her boyfriend was worried about. Yes. She cheats on her boyfriend. While he's fighting for his life, btw. 4) She sets in motion a chain of events that make her friends complicit in murder. 5) She lets a friend die in a crowded place because she can't open a door and can't think to turn around and run to get help from the literal dozens of people right behind her. 6) Did I mention she cheats on her boyfriend? Yeah, she does and then pretends nothing happened until the simp literally spells it out in front of the boyfriend and she gets all teary-eyed. I feel like I missed something, but by the time the climax of the movie hit, I was wishing it would do a "rug-pull" and reveal that the protagonist was the baddie all along. No such luck. This movie isn't that original.
Honestly, I didn't have high expectations going in, but I didn't expect it to be this bad. I was thinking it was going to be a very run-of-the-mill slasher with a little bit of mystery sprinkled in. This movie managed to fail in every aspect. For a slasher it was uninspired and the special effects on the kills were so shoddy that it felt like a movie from the 1970s. I think even the original Friday the 13th and Halloween had better kills that looked more believable. The "plot twist" is barely a twist because it is predictable and done before. The movie is so focused on ripping off Scream, it forgot to actually put a plot in. Decisions made by both the killer and the other characters don't make any sense - leaving one character alive after a gentle bump on the head, only to later try to kill him again, not asking for help when you see that your friend is being killed and there is a literal crowd behind you, etc, etc. Also, the inciting incident is supposed to be something the killer 'planned out' to the last detail, but it relies a lot on luck, which makes the killer just seem like more of an idiot.
As for the characters, they are forgettable and one-dimensional. As I said before (and I'll say it again) the heroine is a scumbag, who cheats, uses others for her own benefit and is pathetically helpless the whole time until the plot needs her to be a final girl. I can't express how much I wanted her to die. When the killer was revealed I honestly sympathized more with them than the final girl and would have loved to see them win the day. I feel this is the issue with a lot of Spanish movies - somehow they just don't know how to write a likable protagonist. It's like they hear 'morally grey' and think "oh, so my male lead will be a wife beater who kills puppies in his free time". There's nothing morally grey about what the main girl, Angela (ironic), does throughout the movie. She is just an asshole, plain and simple. And somehow, the fact that she remains weepy and pathetic throughout all that is even more annoying. She's not remorseful of her actions - just upset that she's facing consequences.
All in all, don't waste your time on this. There are so many better Scream rip-offs to fill your time with.
For example:
- Black Christmas
- Totally Killer
- The Conference
- Happy Death Day
- Final Girls
Comments
Post a Comment