Rating: C-
Dir: Drew Rosas and Nick Sommer
Star: Marshall Caswell, Erin Hammond, Nick Sommer, Mark Metcalf
The concept of a baseball slasher is an appealing one. However, there appears to be a significant gap between concept and execution. We saw this in Night Game, and it rears its ugly head again here. In particular, for long stretches this manages to forget it’s supposed to be a horror movie in general, and a slasher film in particular. What it attempts to fill the void with, is singularly unimpressive. This is a waste of a good set-up. Little League player Billy Haskins is bullied by his team-mates after costing them a fame, until he snaps, killing two of them plus the coach, before being sent to the loony bin.
Fifteen years later… Oh, I am sure most of you reading this, can fill in the blanks. But for those of you who may have never seen a slasher film before: fifteen years later, somebody dressed as an umpire (Metcalf), is offing the former players, with a spiked and bladed baseball bat. The now young adults, such as Bobby Spooner (Caswell), Alison McKenzie (Hammond) and Kyle Tripper (Sommer), have to fend off the unstoppable killer, without getting tossed from… their lives!!! Hey, you’ve got to gin up the excitement here where you can, because the film doesn’t really seem interested in doing so. The narrative is all over the place, to no particular purpose. For instance, it’s 75 minutes before we see Billy in the asylum.
Somehow, this managed to win Best Horror Film at the Phoenix Film Festival. As a resident of Phoenix, I can only apologize. Because this is mediocre at best, the makers apparently thinking they know better than all the slashers which went before. “We’re different,” the movie seems to say. “We’re going to have soap-opera drama between our characters, and you are going to like it.” I’m afraid I have some bad news there. I did not, in fact, like it. I did not like the thread about the malevolent Sheriff. I did not like the sequence where one character eats mushroom-laced sweets and goes on a drug trip. I did not like the random and unexpected gayness. There’s a lot here to not like.
The shame is, when it actually remembers it is a slasher movie, it’s not so bad. The weapon of choice is certainly impressive, and if you’ve never seen a death by pitching machine… you will have by the time the end credits roll. I truly wish the movie had leaned into these sports influences more heavily, instead of almost feeling guilty about them. There are many other potential baseball-related causes of death. Hot dogs. T-shirt cannons. Mascots. Tarpaulins. This is what I wanted to see, rather than a whiny love triangle between twenty-something blandies. If not a swing and a miss, it’s still like a slow grounder to second base, perhaps advancing a runner. My search for the perfect – would settle for decent – baseball horror movie must continue.