It’s rare that a movie comes out this day and age that feels like it was created in the 80s. Even rarer when this film gets all the elements you want out of both and manages to still work.
Jennifer is all business almost all the time. She is out for a night of fun to celebrate a big contract with work, and also her birthday. Sadly her friends all flake out on her and her “boyfriend” has to go home to his wife and kids. Ellie is a “bar-star” and out for a night of free drinks, and maybe hook up with a guy for a one-night-stand. Madeline… well Madeline is out at a bar trying to figure out a lot of things, really. These three women all meet in a rather strange way as the wake up on a slab in a strange warehouse, thinking they are just hungover when in reality, they are all pieces of a singular body.
Patchwork follows the lives of three women, Madeline, Jennifer, and Ellie, and how three seemingly perfect strangers all came to be inside one body. It’s a horror movie that is comedic outwardly but takes itself seriously in the story. What I mean is, the story is absolutely ridiculous, but in the world where this story takes place it’s ridiculousness is never called into question. Much like campy horror movies from the 80s, it’s just accepted that a high school could be built on a nuclear waste disposal site and things would just go bad. It happens, and the characters just kinda… deal with it.
Patchwork feels like a movie that was done in the 80s and would have been shown on USA Up All Night… and if you don’t know what that is, I’m sorry. Back in the late 80s and 90s, the (then) USA network would show cheesy, campy, gory horror movies between the hours of 11pm and 5am. Patchwork would have felt right at home in this line-up. It’s full of cheesy practical gore effects, dumb (but enjoyable) characters, and an absolutely over-the-top story. Speaking of characters, I really enjoyed the characters created in this universe. The majority of them are what you would see in usual schlocky horror films (mad scientists, dopey underlings, bro frat boys etc.) but they are all played well. It would have been easy to really over-do a lot of the character quirks, but it’s as though the actors saw the line where it was “too much” and pulled it back just enough.
Patchwork is a surprisingly good film for what it is, honestly. I don’t know if they were intending to make have the movie compared to the types of flicks shown on USA Up All Night, but if so, it worked. All that is really missing is Rhonda Shear or Gilbert Gottfried and it’s like I’m thirteen all over again.
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