The Funhouse Massacre (2015)
Plot: Six psychopaths escape from a forgotten mental institution and move into the local funfair, relaunching it and murdering the visitors.
Review: B-movies, Grindhouse, cult movies; whatever you call them, they aren’t getting any better.
Funhouse Massacre is meant to be more of a horror-comedy, but doesn’t really do anything to spoof, send up, or mock the movies it seems to be aiming at, instead falling into many of the same traps. The most egregious of these is a sin of many modern horror movies; killing off all of its main cast, while leaving the villains (or some of them) alive. While it’s sequel bait, it’s very frustrating for the viewer; what is the point of getting behind the protagonists journey when it’s likely to end in a swift death?
It doesn’t help that our villains seem to be knock-offs of other characters, some maybe even real life killers. It’s hard to even care who Hardly Quinn (above), her mute Bane-alike killer friend, or any of the others are - they’re just there to help up the body count. And we even get a late plot twist with the local sheriff being related to a couple of them, but it doesn’t work as it’s shoe-horned in, and it doesn’t work as a joke because it doesn’t say anything funny (or even interesting) about things like that happening in horror movie third acts.
It’s not funny, it has nothing new or interesting to say, and it falls into every trap in the modern horror movie playbook while failing to even parody them. A complete and utter waste of time.
