Director: Sean Haitz
Year: 2025
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Trying to make a living, a wannabe stand-up comedian who kills customers to serve in roadside meatball sandwiches finds a potential victim who might be the perfect protege who could help his flourishing comedy routines, but when he gets popular, an upstart might bring his dark side out.
Review:
Overall, this was a fun if somewhat problematic genre effort. Where it works well is sticking to the absurdity of the situation, which provides a slew of generally fun moments throughout. The central setup involving the exploits of the killer who daydreams of being a so-called cannibal-based comedian who also abducts his victims, practices his set on them before killing them and serving them in a secret recipe for his roadside meatball sandwich for others gives this an appropriately goofy and cheesy tone. Having him be more concerned about his comedy career and forced to come to the abducted hostage to get pointers and advice about performing his silly brand of comedy is a generally fun idea that allows for plenty of fun not only from the stand-up routines capitalizing on his so-called cannibalism but also the kinds of outlandish scenarios provided in the course of this one.
As well, when it gets to the slaughter, there’s a lot of fun to be had when it goes for the actions of him being a serial killer taking out others on the side of the road. The opening attack on the lone woman through the desert is a fun way to get this started, much like the secondary sequence where he takes out the couple hanging around the sandwich stand and gets chased down before being slaughtered. Other scenes involving the brief bits of the victims coming to the compound only to get knocked off incredibly gruesomely and graphically in short bursts provide more bloodshed than just the few previous instances of chasing down victims. That also leads into the big sequence where the figure who’s been upending his career is captured and tormented by the killer who looks to finally prove the content of his comedy is real and manages to offer a twisted take on the style, holding this one up rather nicely.
The film does have some big issues holding it back. The main drawback is the outright terrible decision to devote nearly the entirety of the second half here to go in-depth on the stand-up comedy routines he tries out, which renders quite a bit of the film into excruciatingly overlong sequences showing the guy showing up and performing tasteless jokes about eating people. This makes for a rather tough time understanding what’s so scary or chilling about what’s going on with the whole thing evolving into relentless bits showing his comedy sets instead of kills, so it’s rather difficult to get into this one if the jokes themselves don't work for you. With very little about how the twist comes off due to spending so little time on this section of the film in favor of the endless stand-up routines instead, these factors do hold this one back somewhat.
Overview: **.5/5
A disappointing if still enjoyable genre mixture, there’s enough to like here that this is watchable for what it is while still being brought down by those issues into this disappointing realm. Those who appreciate this style or approach or are unbothered by these issues will have the most to like here while those turned off by these factors should heed caution.
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