CarousHELL

 

Name: CarousHELL

Directed By: Steve Rudzinski 

Subgenre: Creature Feature Comedy

Series: Spooktober 2020 entry #24; Trash Panda Files #4; review #86

Review: CarousHELL is about a carousel unicorn that gets tired of being constantly disrespected and decides goes on a pun-fueled killing spree. Also, the unicorn is a Nazi, but that's not important. What is important, however, is the underlying message about how we treat the world around us, how we should undo objectification by way of respect; there's a certain animist quality lurking in the folding metaphors and social commentary, prescient given how far we have sunk as a society. That's the real horror here... The Wife: "Are you still typing out that review? Stop it. You can't type up some pretentious nonsense to make others watch this garbage movie. If you give that stupid movie an ironic 5 out of 5, I'm going to be mad at you. It's so bad." I mean, she's not wrong. Seriously speaking, this is a joke horror movie in the vein of Rubber, Panman, Inhumanwich!, and Llamageddon: horror comedies that very likely started out as a joke among friends and then uncontrollably erupted into a something we can all consume together along with copious amounts of whatever other poison we're feeling in that particular moment. This is very much a popcorn / pizza and friends-who-like-bad-movies kind of film, intentionally so. While the jokes and puns are amusing, the premise starts to wear thin and get a bit grating after a while; thankfully, Rudzinski kept the film to 70 minutes--comparatively tight for full releases--but even that starts to feel a bit long. This isn't one of those films that might trick you into thinking it's going to be deeper than it is (some might argue that happened with Bad Hair); I don't need to tell you to set your expectations appropriately when going into this film because we all know you weren't going to turn this on unless you wanted to watch a sass-mouthed carousel unicorn manifest weapons out of nowhere in order to kill unlikeable teenagers. And hey, for a budget of $1500, some of the kills are actually pretty good! (...even if others are just so bad). You know what you're signing up for, here, and it does what it set out to fairly well. And as a side note, this is where I stopped the original Spooktober 2020 run last year (and what a movie to end on, huh?). I never really addressed it on Facebook, where the series started, because it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. Long story short, I was feeling overwhelmed by all of the projects I had taken on at the time along with other life stressors and, frankly, I just wasn't feeling up to binging on horror at the time. Ask me about my failed rescheduled National Novel Writing Month project that year if you really want to hear me blather on. Point is, from here on out, new material is coming! I'm going to finish out the 2020 season with what I had planned on watching, and then October 2021 is right around the corner. If you've made it this far with me, know that I truly, deeply appreciate it. And if you're new to the blog, know that it means so much to me that you're here. Love y'all, and see you where the shadows live.

Overall Score: 5 out of 5 3 out of 5 Chads who are this tall...to DIE! Did CarousHELL scare you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

IMDB: Here

How to Watch: CarousHELL is available on these platforms.

Official Trailer