Saturday 27 July 2024

Mary Had a Little Lamb (2023) - Another one?

Okay, I'm starting to believe that there's a factory someone in Britain which effectively has a 'production line' which churns out low budget horror films based on source material related to children fairy tales.  I'm a fan of horror flicks in general and don't mind the odd low budget if the movie makes up for it with other qualities.  And not I've seen a fair few on a well-known streaming service which all basically have the same cast, the same location and, as mentioned, very loosely based on a children's nursery rhyme.

Now, if all those qualities don't unite them - they're all also pretty dire.  However, this one was actually decent (and I use that word loosely!) enough to keep me entertained for the duration.  But, don't get wrong - it's no masterpiece, even in terms of B-movies.

If you didn't know what the film was called, you'd probably never guess it was based on a nursery rhyme.  You'd probably just think it was called 'Poodle Maniac' or something, as the killer runs around with a giant mutated poodle's head on him.  Or at least it looked like that particular breed of dog.  Unless anyone can tell me what other animal it was supposed to be?

A group of podcasters... do you care?  Do you really need to know what the reason is that means yet another group of people are stranded in the middle of nowhere (this time in England) well out of the reach of mobile phone range, but just in reach of a mother/son nut-job combo.  You won't care about the characters - two of which make up both halves of the most awkward and unlikely couple I've seen on screen in a long time.  The others all just have weird accents like they're English trying to do an American accent, or vise versa.

About the 'best' cast member is the screwy mother, Mary.  She chews up the scenery like you've never seen.  Not a great actress, but at least memorable among the cast - I'll say that.  And the gore's not bad either.  It's not amazing in as much as none of the kills are particularly inventive, but at least they look realistic (as realistic as when you've just been killed by someone dressed as a half human/half farm animal).

In terms of horror B-movies I have definitely seen worse.  Many I end up turning off within the opening twenty minutes.  This one was bad, but it was watchable in a bad sort of way.  Does that make sense?

5/10 You can watch this film while you're doing the ironing (you'll still get the general gist of it)

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