To be quite honest, I’m not even sure how to go about appropriately articulating how I felt about this film. I’ll do the basics first:

The Axeman of Cutter’s Creek (or Axeman, as it is now known) is a film from Joston Theney and stars a variety of indie horror film favorites: Elissa Dowling, Jamie Bernadette, Chantelle Albers, and (believe it or not) former NBA player Scot Pollard. It’s yet another modern take on the 80′s slasher films, but unfortunately, there’s nothing new and surprising here.

The basic premise is something we’re all familiar with: There is an urban legend about The Axeman that haunts a residence in Big Bear, California, and pretty much kills anyone without mercy. Lo and behold, a group of friends decide to relive their glorious college days and spend a few days in that very haunted cabin. I don’t think I’m really spoiling anything by saying that the damn Axeman shows up…

All right, so now that you’ve got the gist of the plot, I’m only going to give you one piece of advice: Don’t fucking watch this movie. Actually, no. That’s not fair. If you want to watch Axeman, be my guest. But I highly advise you to be under the influence of something. Or, you know… sleeping. Just put it on in the background and say you watched it.

Unlike a lot of horror films I’ve seen, the acting here wasn’t that bad. In fact, it was pretty decent. I genuinely felt that these characters were real. The only downside of that is that I had absolutely no desire to associate with these characters and found myself cheering when The Axeman struck. Every single character was insulting, disgusting, and (to put it bluntly) a fucking asshole. I hated all of them. Not only did I hate them as people, but I grew to despise the entire writing staff of the film. If given a better script, I’m sure I would have felt a little more forlorn about the loss of certain characters, but the script was horrible so fuck that.

No, the real problem here… well, there were several. I’m going to just breeze by the horrible CGI blood splatter and the fact that no one knows why The Axeman is just running around Big Bear killing people, and go straight to my biggest peeve of the film: the dialogue. These are 30-something year old individuals using terms like “tuna trawlers” and “blouse bunnies.” It seems like every character is just a token punchline for another insult. There are the token lesbians, the token perv, the jock, the black dude, the promiscuous lady, the goodie-two-shoes – it’s like watching the cast of The Breakfast Club was thrown into a creepy cabin with a shitty script. It wouldn’t be as bad if the script were actually well written, but it’s not. It’s a crappy script and even the actors tripped over a few of their lines and looked visibly upset uttering some of these “jokes.”

The Axeman himself isn’t too bad, but he doesn’t look like a typical slasher villain. He’s a tall guy in a trenchcoat with a trucker hat… that says “Titties” on it. It was a little strange for me to watch Pollard stick a machete in a girl’s stomach, because I saw him play for the Sacramento Kings when I was a kid. It’s just a little weird for me, but he doesn’t do a bad job in the role. He’s stated in interviews that he’s no actor and that much is obvious. The viewer can definitely tell that he had a good time during the filming, so of all the characters, I will continue to root for The Axeman.

And I am hoping that he comes through and slashes the shit out of this film so that no one else will have to watch this.

AXEMAN is available on DVD from Midnight Releasing.