I have had the screener of Karen the Beauty Queen Killer for much of this month, but hadn't found the time to get around to watching it until this past weekend. This is an indie comedic horror that veers deeply into the modern day version of a B-movie. Directed and co-written by Zachary Snygg (Zombiez), this wildly leans heavily into the use of A.I for almost everything here. Would this one trick pony with its many A.I generated scenes be a memorable watch?
There is a brutal serial killer on the loose in New York, with the masked killer's choice of victim being winners of beauty pageants. Meanwhile, Karen (Jasmin Flores - Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottonhell) is determined to make a career out of winning beauty pageants, much to the annoyance of her hen-pecked and sexually frustrated husband, Ted (Scott Bolger - He Sees You When You're Sleeping). With the killings benefitting her goals, Karen becomes well known in the media, loved and hated in equal measure. When the serial killer is caught, Karen must look to her own skills to continue to be on top of the pageant game.
It became increasingly clear just how much A.I is used here to tell the story. To begin with I didn't notice it too much, I enjoyed the scenes with the killer, and the ridiculously violent and unrealistic way victims were torn apart in geysers of blood. After the killer is stopped though, this falls into a troubled and ultimately dull middle section that seemed to go on forever. It made the picture lose the momentum it had built up to that point. The use of A.I may have been used with a tongue in cheek approach, but it took over so much of the movie that it felt authentic scenes were few and far between. Overhead shots of the city were fine, but the many, many scenes of identical looking crowds of people really overstayed their welcome. It was a bit amusing at first how obvious it all was, but these lengthy parts soon led to extreme boredom, making the 100 minute movie really drag. Visually this had a soulless look to it, and in terms of the plot, not much was really going on. The heavy A.I use ruined the film, with about 80% of the movie having that slightly uncomfortable and artificial look to it. While likely intended as a joke to create a 'so bad its good' type vibe, it fails at this and just becomes bad, with my patience wearing thin. You can have the most disgustingly violent and gory scene ever, but with that A.I look, it did nothing for me other than to make me roll my eyes.
The main characters were not bad. I thought Ted was decent, and special mention goes to the two detectives, with Harris (Phillip Green) and his counterpart having some hilarious scenes together where they have meandering conversations that almost felt ad-libbed. Those scenes were the very best parts of Karen the Beauty Queen Butcher, but few and far between in a sea of terrible looking A.I generated crowd scenes. The humour was ok at times, and it had some current-news jokes thrown in, such as a few referring to modern day folk-hero/alleged CEO killer, Luigi Mangione.
The first twenty minutes or so I didn't think this was bad, I had an early review score that was much higher than what I eventually decided for this. The utter tedium of the middle soon had me desperately wishing for the film to end, it just dragged and dragged. Not completely terrible, the actors were fun in their roles, but there wasn't much actual things happening here, making for a vapid and often pointless experience. Karen the Beauty Queen Butcher is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, with it coming to TubiTV and Fandango in the first week of July.
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