Up next is 2020’s Slayed, a similarly low-budgeted but far more comprehensible festive stalk n’ slash film from prolific direct-to-video horror actor/director Jim Klock. It’s a cheapy but fairly smart effort that utilises that ever-dependable trope of the killer Santa, with a crazed murderer returning to the scene of an Arizona Christmas massacre five years earlier looking to kill again. The Arizona setting is curiously un-festive – it all looks so warm and lovely, though they go all out with lots of lights and decorations to try and make their location as Christmassy as possible.
And what a location. Everything goes down at a condemned water treatment plant that’s all pipes, long, dark corridors, lots of doors and ominous shadows. It's perfect for a horror film, looking like one big creepy Nightmare on Elm Street boiler room, though I do question why a killer would choose this deserted place as his destination on Christmas Eve.
It's a surprisingly solid, compelling plot for such low-budget fare and you can tell this is more than a quick cash grab. The filmmakers were definitely trying to make something decent here and though I’m watching this on Amazon Prime where it’s been rated ‘one star’ (from one review), I’d say it’s definitely deserving of more. Klock is goofy but likeable as Jordan, the stand-in security guard who lucks out when he lands the late shift at the plant on the massacre’s anniversary. He makes a funny line about how he’s “got a feeling that 2020 is gonna be a great year” that makes me wonder. Some googling reveals that, yes, this film was made very quickly during the pandemic, which is admirable, but they don’t make a huge deal out of it.
Klock’s regular collaborator Mike Capozzi is Crandle, the only survivor of the previous massacre, still working at the plant but getting very twitchy as Christmas approaches. He looks like some sort of pumped up, chain-smoking WWF wrestler, seething with menace, still haunted by what happened. He's convinced the killer’s still out there and is hilariously well-prepared, with one entertaining scene showing him stashing all manner of weapons all over the place, just in case.
All is calm, all is bright, except we keep seeing creepy, stalker-y point-of-view shots from some heavy-breathing weirdo murmuring “ho ho ho!” Someone is out there… Then a local girl is kidnapped, a severed arm turns up in the river and Dale (Delton Goodrum), the bad-tempered husband of mouthy plant manager Nicole (Coel Mahal) turns up and starts causing trouble. There are plenty of suspects, some mild intrigue and some decent kills. It’s always fun when Santa pulls a massive crossbow out of his sack, handing out unwanted gifts of arrows to the head.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s hardly Kubrick, but there are a few clever things going on and it all comes together quite nicely in the end. The villain is even afforded a bizarre monologue, name-checking Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves (who, it turns out, is a buddy of the film-makers and sometimes helps them out).
The killer’s motivation and the Santa connection isn’t really explored, but I don’t really care. It’s a cheapie horror fling made with some festive spirit. The characters make the usual litany of dumb decisions you get in these films (just get the hell out of there, people!) but I’m willing to cut it some slack. This one gets pass marks just for being a lot better than I would have expected from a micro-budget, filmed in just ten days during Covid slasher with the piss-poor tagline “Santa’s got an axe to grind.” Well played.
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