Directors: Maxwell Frey, Derek Gibbons
MPAA Rating: NR
Runtime: 87 Minutes
While experiencing the generically titled Psychotic!, it unfortunately dawned on me yet again how undemanding and indolent the horror comedy can get when produced under no ambition.
This film, by directing team Maxwell Frey and Derek Gibbons, occupies that hapless space that good horror-comedies dread to be (and bad ones can’t help but inhabit), being smack dab in the center between the two genre poles that mark this rarely done well subgenre. Rather than this area delineating an indisputable harmony of style, blending scares and laughs effortlessly, the space is so far removed from both ends of the spectrum that it loses all trace of either.
Psychotic! is the perfect middle ground that manages to be equally unfunny and not scary in almost respectable equilibrium of incompetent filmmaking. I would applaud Psychotic! for finding this compromising center, which satisfies nobody, but 1) I know it did not do it on purpose and 2) I still had to sit through the film to find this out.
Psychotic! is a proudly “Brooklyn” slasher film, but other than the title and the numerous references to the Bushwick area lodged into the script, the distinction amounts to little for the story. In essence it’s a typical, nonspecific slasher setup with a killer being on the loose in the area, one who specifically targets parties (Bushwick Party Killer, he is so eloquently dubbed) and our group of twenty-something rebel-rousers being prime fodder for his various sharp implements.
The components are here, but the execution is decidedly lackluster, be it in the tonal missteps when attempting to introduce the “comedy” or the loose, aimless narrative, which doesn’t let the killer have a presence in the film at all. Though it begins with a dedicated attempt to recreate the infamous opening from John Carpenter’s Halloween, the filmmakers knowledge of the genre that they are mimicking/parodying consistently comes into question due to their clear misunderstanding of how a horror film functions.
Recounting the story is pointless because, while that presupposes that characters were distinct enough to care enough to follow their respective arcs, it also assumes there is enough material that is important enough to recount. Even at a brisk 87 minutes, Psychotic! is weighed down by repetitive scenes, primarily of apartment parties soaked in indigo flood lights and decorated like the dorm room of a raver with endless inauspicious dialogue that feels improvised in how inconsequential it all is.
A killer of unknown origin and lacking so much as an identity in the costume area is on the loose and Psychotic! partakes in a story involving a band breaking up and a failed romance almost independent of our masked entity. Worse, it’s supplemented by endless scenes of “riffing,” where wooden actors pretend to be stoned and talk over each other incessantly hoping one of them could stumble onto a punchline.
Sadly this never happens as Psychotic! is about as funny as being the only one sober at a raucous party. Its humor is juvenile, frat-like levels of barbs thrown at drunks making asses of themselves while waiting impatiently for a knife to mercifully find its way across their throats. Shockingly it never attempts to mine the horror elements for any jokes as you would if you were a competent horror-comedy, but understandably, with how slapped together the effects look, the only hope would be to play it uncomfortably straight and hope someone laughs unintentionally.
Trying to pass of your inadequacies as a horror film as intentional comedy is all this film has going for it and yet it is never interesting enough to hit those implausible levels of “so bad its good.” Putting the weird tonal mess it makes of its balancing act aside, Psychotic! never engages in its bland, lurching shuffle to its bloody conclusion.
An effort is made to shake up the monotony to some degree with some varied kills (for either laughs or horror – I could never tell what emotion any scene was aiming for) in the conclusion. The paper-masked killer disembowels one character with a bong in the umpteenth stoner “joke” and makes another victim forcibly chew a whisky bottle in a move too bizarre not to appreciate, I suppose.
Yet the effects just aren’t there to support their sudden inspiration so close to the climax, and these sequences are forgotten just as soon as they wrap up. Like the rest of the film, because of its confusion over its own identity, it is near impossible to find a way in to its self-defeating genre mixing.
Thankfully I’ll forget Psychotic! and its rambling killing spree through its beloved Bushwick sooner rather than later, but it won’t leave without reiterating my distrust of horror-comedies. A volatile mixture that rarely is worth the effort, finding the funny in horror or the fear in comedy is indeed an artform that takes time and effort to nail down.
Often, as seen here, being incapable of doing either genre effectively allows you to cut one’s losses and aim for a mediocre middle in the hopes that the fluctuating distinction can grant you some leeway in your provoking of laughs and/or scares. Psychotic! is the worst of both worlds.
