FrightFest review – That’s a Wrap
With the Blood Feast remake and the Blind/Pretty Boy duo, director Marcel Welz has marked out his territory – garishly-coloured, self-aware, low-budget, ultra-gruesome, defiantly crude lo-fi horror … and That’s a Wrap is the most basic slasher scenario imaginable wrapped up in Scream-style jokes about slashers.
Cerina Vincent – remember her from Cabin Fever and a bunch of Sasquatch-type horrors circa 2005? – is even referred to as the ‘Janet Leigh Drew Barrymore’ of It’s a Wrap, the film within a film by auteur Mason Maestro (Robert Donavan) – and has her own self-contained bit (with exit) early on. Mason has the cast – but not the crew – of the picture hang out at Wolfpack Studios in Burbank (a real place) for a party to celebrate the end of filming, and someone dressed as the film’s killer the Mistress – who wears a chainmail balaclava and a blonde girly wig – goes around murdering the actors … most of whom embody some petty sin, vice or sexuality – the exhibitionist who does nudity is gutted in the shower, the gay guy Tenebrae-bloodspatters a white backdrop, a horny stoner gets his dick chopped off, etc.
It’s the sort of film where a prudish girl (Sarah Polednak) gets a bit tipsy and someone tells her she’ll be getting nailed on set three before the night is out – and you can pretty much guess how the rest of her character arc is going to go. Harper (Sarah French), final girl of the film, finds herself tied up by the killer – who is one of the funnier, dimmer characters – and the brains behind it all – who stops the film dead with what feels like a twenty-minute monologue on why everyone else deserves to die. Donavan, who used to be in a lot of those cable erotica movies (Sex Files, Emmanuelle Through Time, etc), has a bickering relationship with his diva-type partner, played by Monique Parent – who used to be in a lot of those top shelf video rental erotic thrillers (Midnight Confessions, Blonde Heaven, etc). Campy, shrill, with a slightly bitter aftertaste – but watchable enough.
Here’s the FrightFest listing.
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