FrightFest review – Pretty Boy

My notes on Pretty Boy

Director Marcel Walz got more laughs with his melodramatic stalker/slasher Blind than his campy remake of Blood Feast – which might have prompted him to change the tone of this sequel (in its end credits, Blind revealed it was only Blind Part One), though when this tries for crass laughs they feel forced and there’s a bizarre, offputting tendency to stop the action for lengthy monologues from even minor characters as if the director could only sign his cast by promising to give them all something they could put on their showreel.

Faye (Sarah French), the blind ex-movie star lead of Blind, spends the first act unconscious, the second act handcuffed to a bed and the third act tied to a mattress in the cellar – though she’s still notionally the lead character.  Hulking thug Pretty Boy (Jed Rowen), mannequin-masked and Boris Johnson-wigged throughout, is limited as a monster since he plainly doesn’t intend to hurt Faye – so he has to slaughter pretty much everyone else in the cast just to keep things eventful.  After a recap of the first film, PB carries the unconscious Faye to a nearby house in the Hollywood Hills where gay music manager Preston (Jake Red) is holding a singles-only Valentine’s Party.  Folks hook up, monologue, do schtick, and generally tread water until they get killed … in kind of ho-hum manners.

Then, when all that’s done with, Faye and PB slog to the house next door and yet another plot kicks in to render the first hour of the movie a narrative dead end.  We meet a creepy couple (Maria Olsen, Robert Rusler) who both have monologues in them – which makes the fact that the killer is mute something of a relief or else he’d get five minutes to reminisce about something or other.  It’s too mean-spirited to be much fun – the finale hinges on one of my least favourite genre tropes, forced pregnancy – though there’s some competent use of ‘80s style pink lighting and the droning synth pop music score is likeable pastiche before it starts wearing on the nerves.

Here’s the FrightFest listing.