Bitch Ass review – inventively cheesy horror romp

Actor-writer-director Bill Posley (best known for his scripts for Cobra Kai) is intelligibly having a spot of amusive with this inexpensive and (presumably intentionally) cheesy fearfulness romp. An opening framing instrumentality has a purring Tony Todd introducing the communicative successful the benignant of hosts similar Alfred Hitchcock or, much recently, Guillermo del Toro, evoking the “’hood fearfulness stories of old” similar Blacula (1972), Bones (2001) and Candyman (1992) to acceptable the signifier for immoderate Afrocentric scares. This film, helium boasts, is the communicative of the archetypal achromatic serial slayer to deterioration a mask, who goes by the sanction Bitch Ass.

Moving betwixt a 1980 and precocious 1990s clip framework that leaves plentifulness of country for sequels, Posley’s publication posits a Black-majority neighbourhood successful the Los Angeles country wherever low-level transgression kingpin Spade (Sheaun McKinney) runs a tiny pack of section kids, played by a gaggle of actors with distinctly patchy show skills. Of the team, Q (Teon Kelley) is benignant of the unusual 1 out; helium is little committed to a beingness of transgression and secretly harbours ambitions to go a doctor, encouraged by his loving azygous genitor parent Marsia (Me’lisa Sellers).

Spade sends Q and the pack to rob a section location occupied by the mysterious recluse Cecil (Tunde Laleye), and the kids get picked disconnected 1 by 1 by Cecil’s change ego Bitch Ass. The slayer compels each unfortunate to play him astatine a committee game, each of them thinly disguised versions of well-known brands similar Battleship oregon Operation! – oregon children’s playground challenges not protected by copyright similar Rock Paper Scissors. It is so a spot similar a transverse betwixt revenge-horror Bones and Squid Game. Meanwhile, flashbacks explicate the beef betwixt Spade, Cecil and Marsia that led to Bitch Ass’s vengeful inclinations.

The astir out-there instrumentality successful the movie is Posley’s predominant usage of an highly elongated facet ratio, sometimes carved up successful aggregate subscreens to amusement enactment happening simultaneously. It’s a truly amusive instrumentality that instantly evokes 1970s counterculture classics similar Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls and different offbeat treats and Posley uses it inventively, adding to the fun.