It’s rare that I watch a movie solely on the fact that I want to see what the setting looks like, or how it is represented. When I scrolled to “The Mutilator” I was hooked because I wanted to see how one of my favorite vacation spots was shown in a film. To say that I was disappointed would be underselling it.
In a quiet house, a boy cleans his father’s rifle … as a birthday surprise for him when he returns home from work. Sadly, during this, a tragic accident occurs and little Ed Jr. shoots his mom, killing her just before the father returns. Flash forward some amount of time (honestly, I forgot) and Ed Jr. is in college and getting ready for Thanksgiving break. His friends convince him to take advantage of their family vacation/fishing home in the outer banks of NC. They all pack up and head down for some fun but are met by Ed Sr. and his giant axe (metaphorical and literal) to grind.
In some write up somewhere, on some site, I saw that this movie took place in the outer banks of NC. I can’t seem to find that writeup again to verify, but … let’s just say for the sake of this review, I’m not crazy. So, I watched The Mutilator hoping to catch a glimpse of things that I am VERY familiar with in its location, as I vacation there myself almost once a year. Sadly there were no shots of Avalon Pier, or The Wright Brothers Museum, or even Captain Franks.
The Mutilator is oddly not a good movie while being really good at being … bad. The opening scene with the gun and the death of the mother is hilariously both over AND under acted. The death scenes are somewhat creative, but nothing that hasn’t really been done before. The best part of the film is the ability of the vacationing kids to be so insanely unaware of almost literally anything going wrong around them. I also really enjoyed the entirety of the “hide and seek” game they played as the movie attempts to make you think the characters can’t see anything in the “dark” while clearly being able to see all the actors on the screen.
All said and done this is a movie that is just good Halloween fodder to put on and leave running in the background of a party or something similar. There aren’t any real “sex scenes”. The deaths are gory enough. But the way in which the director/writer attempts to connect all these things together is hilarious. Also, that final bad guy death is pretty great.
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