He Comes to Kill (2022) by August Aguilar

Director: August Aguilar

Year: 2022

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Slasher

Plot:

After his escape from prison, a notorious serial killer returns to a small-town home he used to prey on and starts a vicious rampage throughout the community, eventually forcing a rogue cop into action to stop the deadly killer before more are killed.

Review:

This was a fairly fun shorter genre effort. What works well here is a simplistic and straightforward setup that provides plenty of opportunities for this one to get the point rather nicely with the generally fun storyline of the killer being released by the crazed follower and setting off into the community. That provides a great way for us to get to know the residents and their personal issues in the first half before switching gears into the second half with a bit more focus on the slashing as the crazed killer gets more of a chance to knock the townspeople off. Some of this does manage to run on a bit too long in this kind of shorter running time where the opportunity is different from that to flesh these kinds of characters out the way it should but it's still quite endearing for the townspeople which helps this out.

Once it gets to the stalking here, this one manages to have some fun with a solid series of indie-style ambush attacks that effectively showcase the crazed nature of the killer in question. Not just content with the opening butchering of the victim inside the asylum chamber before the escape, sequences like the book store encounter, the big brawl in the meeting hall where he knocks off several people during the sequence, and the final confrontation at the hideout where multiple brawls take place at once are pulled off nicely with some great indie gore in the process. There are plenty of occasions here where its budget shines through and does provide some points where that's apparent, especially a plotline involving a sidekick-like character offering some cult-like story that doesn't have time to be explored, but that's not enough to hold this down.

Overview: ***/5

A highly enjoyable indie slasher that has a few issues, this one has enough to like that it's able to hold itself up over those issues to be quite likable. Those who appreciate this kind of indie genre effort or the approach taken here will probably like this one while those that don't appreciate this type of film should heed caution here.