Film critic Roger Ebert had a theory that any film featuring character actor M. Emmet Walsh can’t be all that bad. I posit a similar hypothesis in that any movie opening with the daughter of Hulk Hogan bandaged, bruised and bloodied can’t be all that bad. And yet L.A. Slasher is that bad and then increasingly worse.
Brooke Hogan is but one of the D-list “personalities” and/or tabloid fixtures cast in director/co-writer Martin Owen’s first feature and the targets of the titular, social media-savvy murderer. That he is played by NewsRadio alum Andy Dick, no stranger to the TMZ feed, is, one supposes, intended as chocolate-rich irony. The numbed narration he babbles throughout sounds like remedial Travis Bickle: “Reality TV: birthplace of the moron.”
Clad in a white suit and a mask reminiscent of the pigment-washed Michael Jackson, this L.A. Slasher is a mover and a shaker; he has places to be, self-absorbed people to kill. On his radar for victimization are a vapid actress (Mischa Barton, TV’s The O.C.), a pop star (Drake Bell, Superhero Movie), a snotty heiress (co-writer Elizabeth Morris) and so on. Their labels double as their characters’ “names” — a creative choice that subs for true edginess, no matter how Tarantinoian the dialogue has been jerry-rigged to sound.
Owen can spruce up any given frame with enough neon to make L.A. Slasher gleam with a spiffy distraction, but no amount can cover the awful whiff of a flick trying way too hard to hang with the cool kids. Too enamored with itself to achieve dark humor, the movie may think it’s pushing the envelope, but doesn’t even get close enough to lick it. Utterly boring in its empty shell of execution, it has all the satiric bite of a retirement home resident so feeble, she has to gum her supper of creamed corn. —Rod Lott