With the screener to the film I originally intended to watch for review today not working I did my usual and instead decided to watch one of my own choosing. I had been contemplating once again getting rid of my Shudder subscription, instead I chose to watch the comedy horror film Slaxx. Directed and co-written by Elza Kephart (Graveyard Alive), this tale about a possessed pair of jeans had some fun moments, but was the idea enough to carry an entire film?
Libby (Romane Denis) has gotten her dream job working at a trendy clothing store. With an exclusive new brand of jeans launching the next day, her and the other staff members are doing an all-nighter to get the store ready for the launch. Unknown to all though is that one of the new pairs of jeans is somehow possessed, and it begins to kill the staff off one by one. Discovering an increasing body count, the store manager - Craig (Brett Donahue - The Editor) decides to try and cover up the strange deaths, putting the success of his store over the health of his staff members, while a store lock-down (to prevent details of the new jeans being leaked by staff) means that those still left alive have nowhere to escape to.
The film had a great idea, and it was due to a sentient pair of jeans being the antagonist that I originally added this to my Shudder 'to-watch' list. There are some good moments here, some of the kills were a lot of fun, especially one around the halfway mark that was far more gory and violent than you would expect from some cotton trousers! Rather than looking purposely bad, the effects for the jeans were achieved using a lot of green screen, so they looked like they were moving on their own rather than super fake and cheesy. I didn't expect there to be much of a background lore dump for how they came to be, but thanks to a recurring flashback sequence that replays from the prologue all the way to near the end credits there is an explanation of sorts.
The message is about how poorly treated third world countries are by big businesses, the business here has a friendly facing message, yet it is toxic and hypocritical from within. Staff are friendly in an extremely fake way, and Libby's idealism is really destroyed over the course of the movie as she witnesses the ugliness hidden from view. Unfortunately this is reflected in the location, with plain sterile corridors off the shop floor that gave a lifeless feel. As fun as some of the kills can be, having it set against a near detail-less environment meant that stuff did get dull. It didn't help that it was a good while before characters figured what was going on, and that Libby herself wasn't the most exciting protagonist. I thought Donahue was fun as the very fake acting boss. Having management pretending to care about staff is something that most people who have worked anywhere have experienced, so that was familiar. Other than those the rest of the characters didn't get too much opportunity to be anything to stand out, existing just as victims for the occasionally dancing pair of jeans.
As fun as the jean based antagonist was, there just wasn't enough going on to carry this through its seventy eight minute run time. Maybe if the first act had been sped up a bit there could have been more jean battling, as it was, there was a lot of running and hiding, and an appropriate ending, but seemed to run out of steam on occasion. Slaxx can currently be streamed on Shudder.
SCORE:
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