A Night of Horror International Film Festival Review: “My Cherry Pie” (2021) Australian Independent Feature Is a Fun Slice of Slasher Cinema
by Joseph Perry
Australian feature My Cherry Pie is a bloody valentine to 1980s slasher movies, with some Giallo references and a pinch of Spider Baby (1967) for good measure. Impressive practical effects, good performances, quality direction, and some wicked humor make this an independent effort worth seeking out.
Opening with some masked-slasher-in-the-woods action, the story soon turns to the release from prison of Freddy (Sotiris Tzelios), who is met by his mates Jack (Dylan Heath) and Green (Tim Jason Wicks). A crime spree involving the trio goes awry, and they need to make tracks out of Melbourne fast. When their car goes kaput in a rural area, local Edwin Crow (Glenn Maynard) offers them food and shelter for the night until he can tow them to a mechanic in the morning. Edwin’s niece Cherry (Trudi Ranik) is on hand to help with the cooking and some after-dinner dancing entertainment.
People with broken-down vehicles who accept offers of hospitality from folks who live in the sticks rarely come out of things well, and My Cherry Pie makes certain of that in gleefully gruesome fashion. And let’s not forget that there is a psychotic slasher roaming the area.
Though My Cherry Pie is not a horror comedy, it does provide a lot of laughs thanks in large part to the dynamics of the criminal trio. Codirectors Addison Heath and Jasmine Jakupi, working from a screenplay by Heath, provide them with some often hilarious dialogue and situations.
Heath and Jakupi eschew the eighties pastiche aesthetic that many modern slasher throwbacks attempt, focusing instead on good storytelling, with the ensemble cast members playing things straight rather than tongue-in-cheek. The gruesome, gore-soaked practical effects work from Special Makeup Effects Artists Nick Kocsis and Armanda Pozzetto is another highlight of this film.
Slasher film aficionados and those who love well-made independent horror films would be wise to put My Cherry Pie on their need-to-see lists.
Directed by: Addison Heath and Jasmine Jakupi
Written by: Addison Heath
Produced by: Black Forest Films
Genre: Horror
Starring: Trudi Ranik, Sotiris Tzelios, Dylan Heath, Tim Jason Wicks, Glenn Maynard
Runtime: 81 minutes
Rated: NR
Release Date: 2021 (world premiere at A Night of Horror International Film Festival; expected Australian release date is March, 2022)
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for When It Was Cool (whenitwascool.com), the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
No comments:
Post a Comment