As an SOV afficionado, I’d had ‘Garden Tool Massacre’ recommended to me a few times by folk over the years, So I figured tonight would be the night…

Honestly, theres not much to say, the film is set somewhere between the midlands and the north of England, and it could best be summed up as ‘What if John Carpenters ‘Halloween’ happened just outside of Manchester, England?’

The plot is about a guy who murders his wife, and a couple of days later is apprehended by the police who put him in a maximum security mental health facility. He promptly goes mute and doesnt react to anyone for about 7-8 years, where he promptly escapes the facility by just…murdering a janitor and walking out…

and the next thing to happen is we cut to a group of lads as they’re getting ready for a weekend long party at one of the lads houses…

And you’d think that that would then be the premise…our Killer rocking up at the party and slowly picking the lads off…BUT YOU’D BE WRONG! because the vast majority of the film is just the lads awkwardly having THE most 90s english house party I’ve ever seen (seriously this brought back a LOT of memories) while a series of ‘fake outs’ happen where you THINK they’re going to be killed…but they arnt…This continues for the full runtime until about 10-15 minutes off the end, when the ‘massacre’ formally DOES start, and could best (and most generously) be described as an exercise in ‘Copy/pasting’…

The script itself is frustrating, with a first act that feels alive behind the eyes and is keen to set the entire movie up as effectively as possible. Which it succeeds in doing really, I was genuinely on board with this thing right up till the 2nd act, where the breaks are pounded and the whole film just falls into a load of people talking nonsense at a house party for the better part of 30-40 minutes…Before we crash into a VERY repetative final act that felt like a film going through the motions leading to a rather uninspiring and dry finale that just dumps you into the credits without so much as a wink and a good bye.

The characters are all one note and fairly generic, with talking topics largely being centered around beer, birds, peeing, murderers and horror films. the dialogue is rigid, unnatruralistic and due to poor audio recording equipment, BARELY audible most of the time. its a really poor show honestly that just made me wish I was watching ‘Halloween’ for most of the runtime.

Mercifully, the direction and cine DO impress. Given this was the writer/directors first foray into feature film making we get a VERY impressive creative vision that, really drags up a subpar script to something much more worth your time. Scenes are clearly very carefully planned out and crafted and its clear that, while this was a skeleton crew on hand, every attempt to keep things as close knit and to the directors vision was taken.

While the vast majority of the film does play out like one long ‘continual action sequence’ occaisonally broken up by random killings. the shots are very well composed, theres a sense of dynacism in the camera movements and given this was low/no budget, it does feel like it was at least attempting to put an heir of professionalism behind the lens.

Theres at least some attempt at utilizing B-roll, though more would have definitely been welcome, the editing for this one is really tight with some solid match cuts and decent transitions across the runtime. Visually, apart from the fact that the VHS quality here is ABSOLUTELY to the wall (im assuming the filmed this in SLP mode) it looks consistent and about as solid an attempt as i’ve seen in the SOV genre to make something feel fairly filmic.

Soundtrack wise, we have a problem. So the original scoring for this film was apparently almost entirely movie music, or copyrighted studio releases. So here for SRS’s release, we have a licensed score that DOES fit the bill and is used appropriately…But that isnt the issue. The issue is that all the dialogue audio was recorded using the video cameras on board mic. And the cast here all have VERY thick northern accents. AND they’re all in various echoey rooms…Which means I cant hear a bloody thing being said in this movie, other than the occasional line where the cast member was literally talking RIGHT into the microphone, or if they did an overdub. What I WAS able to hear though, was largely just idle chatter and horror references…So I dont think I was missing much.

And as such, the performances here are kind of moot too. The cast were all friends of the director more or less, they had limited acting experience, and largely just sort of awkwardly stand about and occasionally deliver muffled lines that I cant quite here. Honestly? the fact this release doesnt come with a subtitle track was probably the biggest miss this company have ever made…

Garden Tool Massacre is a game of two halves. While visually this is really rock solid, and it has its moments of being funny, or genuinely impressive gore wise. The sound issues, lack of animation from the cast and VERY lumpy script, ultimately hold this thing back from really hitting its potential. Even with this in mind, I did find myself having a bit of a soft spot towards it, not enough to make me want to recommend it. But almost certainly enough that I could see myself rewatching this one again, partly for the nostalgia, and partly to ACTUALLy try and figure out what the hell these people are saying for the most part.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/garden-tool-massacre/