I SCREAM ON THE BEACH!: FILM REVIEW

I Scream On the Beach! is a slasher parody written and directed by Alexander Churchyard and Michael Holiday, with a story by Max Davenport. In the quiet coastal village of Mellow Beach, barmaid Emily (Hannah Paterson) mourns the loss of her father one year ago at Halloween. Though her mother reckons he just abandoned them, Hannah knows the truth: he was murdered. And now, with a gas-masked killer roaming the town, she's going to find out why.

The film has a unique style in that it's been downgraded to look like a VHS tape from the 80s. This is achieved perfectly, a retro-style grain added and even tracking lines creeping up the screen at one point. That latter bit gave me a lovely warm feeling as I'm old enough to remember mashing the buttons trying to get those damned lines to disappear. Lovely. There's also a couple of entertaining trailers, for actual films rather than spoofs, no less (apart from Attack of the Ghost Alligator, more's the pity) and an ad for that perennial favourite drink brand 'Beer'.

The video nasty stylings don't end there. The sound is initially pretty muddy, though thankfully that clears up quickly because the film-makers realise that in 2020 we have the technology to actually hear our films clearly and have got used to it. The dubbing is also intentionally off at times, and while this gets annoying at times it does help sell the illusion. It also plays punchline sometimes,where voices clearly don't match actors' expressions, or when two characters kiss with an extremely fake 'mwah' sound played over the top. The soundtrack is also gorgeous, with Coeur's score coming across all Goblin.

The jokes are quite funny, and a lot of the humour is derived from the chatting and chemistry between the actors. Dani Thompson is especially fun in her role as a bitchy wannabe actress, and Rosie Kingston and Ross Howard especially shine Emily's best friend Claudine and her boyfriend Bants. The acting is never especially subtle, ranging from hammy to ropey, but that's part of the charm and the parody. Sadly Hannah Paterson's performance is too weak to really draw us in and make us feel for the character, though she is endearing in the role. She is at least better than Leigh Trifari as Detective Kinkaid, who feels like she's been dropped in from a different film and tends to deliver lines as if reading from cue cards. The cast of surrounding weirdos are all great fun, though, especially the spooky nun and her talk of The Beasts. There's even a great cheesy cameo from Troma's Uncle Lloydie himself, Lloyd Kaufmann, as a ghost who just about stops short of wearing a sheet and rattling some chains. Delicious.

Strangely, apart from the jokes and the film's stylistic aping of films-gone-by, a large part of the events of the film are played relatively straight. For a lot of the runtime I wondered when we'd get to some good solid slashing in this slasher parody. I found myself thinking of the teenagers from The League of Gentlemen and their disdain for films that don't have enough killings. 'This needs more killings,' I thought – shortly before they began in earnest, with a gruesome decapitation and a glorious head-squishing being the best bloody centrepieces. After spending a little too long setting up its central mystery, the film finally hit its stride and becomes the great video nasty romp it promised.

And then... look, I'm not going to spoil it for you, but there's a massive twist and a revelation at the climax that sends the film spinning from fun spoof to absolutely silly nonsense. It's a huge tonal shift, that would have worked a lot better if there'd been more of this kind of silliness throughout. If they'd underplayed the mystery aspect and ramped up the nonsense, then this would have felt like a natural progression. As it is, it just baffles and confuses and leaves the film ending on a bit of a sour note.

That said, it's still a fun watch, and extremely well-accomplished in the way it harkens back to the days of VHS and cruder, less polished films. Younger viewers will likely be entirely put off, but it's not a film for them; it's for folks who pushed those big black cassettes into the video-player's slot and cursed the last person to rent the film because they hadn't rewound it.

It looks like Churchyard and Holiday are making The Decorator, a film that's mentioned often and even shown within this film, so here's hoping that they bring the visual flair and work on polishing some of the rougher edges so they go from strength to strength.