"THE WEEDHACKER MASSACRE" (2024) Takes The Pleasure Out Of Horror Parody (REVIEW)
Parody in horror is one of the hardest things to pull off well. Not only does one have to have a deep understanding of why something is scary, but they also need to explore how to make the shocking into something more silly and laughable. It’s why so many praise the first two “Scary Movie” films because they understand the assignment of lampooning horror tropes and characters while also knowing what makes them work, and more parodies fail than succeed. For every “Saturday the 14th” to “Pandemonium” there is maybe a half of an “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” and “The Weedhacker Massacre” from TCM alum Allen Danziger is the latest attempt and making scary funny. Will this make you laugh with tears of joy or tears of sorrow?
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A comedy/horror movie about college student Willie Wonder who drove 13 coeds to the Earth Wind Music Fest in Red Eye, the illegal weed capital of Texas. Protected by his amazing Jheri-Curl hair, he survives after being shot in the head.
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HOW IS IT?
One of the “rules” we have here at Macabre Daily is to always be candid in our reviews, but never be cruel. We are fortunate enough to screen films from all different places, with varying budgets, and novel ways of storytelling, and judge each film based on entertainment. Even with the best of intentions, sometimes a movie just doesn’t work, and “The Weedhacker Massacre” is unfortunately in that camp. For a horror comedy, it has little of the former and the latter is attempted with more misses than hits. It also has an issue with story bloat where multiple storylines don’t play out to anything of worth and end up confusing what should be a straightforward giggle and gore fest into something much less interesting.
As the title implies, “The Weedhacker Massacre” is a riff on the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in which one of the actors and lead producers, Allen Danziger starred in. In the case of “TCM,” that was a simple story about kids who walked into the wrong house, but in “The Weedhacker Massacre” we have something more confusing and convoluted as we learn about two brothers that grow weed in Texas, a war between festival promoters and weed dealers, all while there is a film being remade about the Weedhacker Massacre that happened in 2014 of which there was supposedly only one survivor. This doesn’t even begin to get into the “Leatherface” or “Pokerface” character that is a Temu version of Gunnar Hansen in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.” This Pokerface may not be the bad guy he’s made out to be, even if he holds hostage a man for 10 years. If you're already confused don’t worry, so were we. There is so much going on in this that it’s hard to know what storyline you’re focused on, why it matters, and how all of this is supposed to connect. At 93 minutes the film is uneven in almost every way with no sense of pacing, tension, or humor that isn’t the lowest common denominator. We can’t even fault the direction or the casting, as most of the folks seem to be improving some lines or just going with what’s in the script and that’s likely the culprit for this mess.
A bad script doesn’t have to sink a film, but it does make its chances of success slimmer. The self-awareness that some microbudget filmmakers deploy to acknowledge this can work in service of the film by essentially calling a spade a spade so the audience knows you’re in on the joke, but “The Weedhacker Massacre” takes a decidedly different approach with humor that is supposed to be funny, but just isn’t. It all comes across as if there wasn’t much of a script except for a general outline of events and everyone was asked to fill in the gaps when they shot their scene. Even when dialogue is scripted, and you can tell by the delivery, it lacks any kind of personality whatsoever and relies on stereotypes to drive characterization. We weren’t expecting a masterpiece here, but so much of this feels like a bunch of short film ideas mashed together with no concern for how this would play to an audience in 2025. There is also a sense of anger and resentment here, with many nods being made to how filmmaking is all about the money and how the fake movie they’re making would be “lucky to get on VOD.” These are interesting ideas that could've been expanded on by using the film as a metaphor for indie productions and getting noticed, but that opportunity flies over the proverbial heads of the filmmakers like the one good gore scene in the film involving a sliced-off forehead.
LAST RITES
“The Weedhacker Massacre” is an unfortunate mess of ideas that confuse the viewer and convolute the story, all while not delivering anything funny or scary in the process and missing some obvious thematic threads that could’ve made this more interesting than it is.
THE GORY DETAILS
Directed By
Written By
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Where can you watch it?
“The Weedhacker Massacre” just had its premiere at the Golden State Film Festival on February 20, 2025, and is awaiting further distribution.
