GRAVY Review

Release Date: October 2, 2015 (Limited) October 6, 2015 (VOD Platforms)
Director: James Roday
MPAA Rating: NR
Run Time: 95 Minutes

Hot off his successful run playing Shawn Spencer on USA’s Psych, James Roday has hopped in the director’s seat with his feature film debut, Gravy, a horror-comedy that feels more like an R-rated episode of his show, rather than an actual fleshed-out movie.

The film takes place on Halloween and revolves around the staff of a Mexican restaurant that is closing down for the night but is then invaded by three psychotic cannibals wanting to play a game with them before enjoying an All Hallow’s Eve meal.

The solid cast breathes a surprising amount of life into the veritable “who’s who” of generic, one-note characters, who are either flat stereotypes or who are underdeveloped and cartoonish.

The three killers are played by Lily Cole, Jimmi Simpson and Michael Weston, and although Simpson and Weston give arguably the best performances, their motives are unexplained and none of them really sell the whole sadistic killer thing.

Tonally, Gravy attempts to balance laughs with grotesque gore, landing somewhere within the Very Bad Things realm of dark comedy, but things are rarely funny and the threadbare plot doesn’t prove to be interesting enough to stand on its own as a horror film either. For fans of blood however, there is a substantial amount of carnage to be had, and it appeared as though all the effects were done practically, using gallons of blood everywhere and raising the violence to an almost comical level.

One of the more annoying aspects of Gravy is its exhausting editing. The film tends to move at a break-neck pace nearly the entire time, giving the viewer little time to process what each character said during the scattershot visuals, which is a must, considering the dialogue is needlessly complex and overwritten. The film jumps from scene to scene, giving us only small morsels of plot, some of which feel completely unnecessary, such as the small bookends featuring Sarah Silverman and the storyline involving a sad loser patron played by Ethan Sandler.

In a year chock full of horror comedies, Gravy just doesn’t stack up to others like What We Do In The Shadows, Turbo Kid or The Final Girls. It’s the type of film that seems like it probably should have been released back in the early 2000s, when this particular brand of dark comedy was king. I think Roday does show promise as a director (and I did get a kick out of cameos from the Psych stars), but Gravy is ultimately underwhelming and forgettable.