Welcome to Knockout Horror. We are back to catching up on some of the movies that released late in 2024, this January. We missed a bunch thanks to our Festive Frights feature so it seemed only right to check a few out while the 2025 horror pickings are still pretty thin. One such movie is Bloody Axe Wound which released right in the closing days of 2024.
Funnily enough, I had put off writing my Worst of 2024 list. Not for any real reason other than just being a little on the busy side of life. I had the list set and was pretty sure nothing would appear to force its way in but, boy, was I ever mistaken. Bloody Axe Wound doesn’t just force its way onto the list. It busts the door down, pulls its junk out to the other competitors, and marches all the way to the number 1 spot.
The Worst Horror Movie of 2024
If am being perfectly honest while voicing a fairly controversial opinion that I have. I think that Shudder is responsible for distributing some pretty terrible horror movies. Sure, they occasionally knock it out of the park with titles like In a Violent Nature, Oddity, and Late Night With The Devil. But, generally speaking, the “Shudder Original” tag is not one that inspires any kind of faith in me. Quite the opposite, in fact. They are very similar to Blumhouse in that they will put their name to any old pile of shit purely to pad out their overly priced, severely lacking, library of films.
With that being said, Bloody Axe Wound is bad even by Shudder’s standards. Hell, Bloody Axe Wound would be an embarrassment to Tubi. It is to the point where I would have walked out of the cinema or turned the movie off, had I not been planning to review it. That is something I almost never do but this title is bad in so many ways that it really isn’t deserving of any of your time, regardless of how much you can tolerate terrible horror.
The summary of the movie is.. Let’s just say, not good. A high school student wants to take over the family business of murdering kids, slasher style, to produce films for the family’s VHS tape shop. Along the way, she realises the harsh realities of what she is doing, develops a crush, fights gender stereotypes.. yada yada yada. That terrible plot, believe it or not, is not the movie’s big problem. In fact, the opening scenes are, actually, rather promising.
An Okay Start
The movie opens with some satirical slasher stuff. Portraying characters as if the whole slasher thing is a family business designed to make movies which the family then rent out to people. Kind of like The Munsters but with killers rather than monsters. Our protagonist, Abbie (Sari Arambulo), would be Marilyn.. Only, a far more blood thirsty Marilyn aiming to prove to her dad that she can be just as effective a killer despite being a girl.
It’s not particularly well executed. The humour falls flat, the script is horrifyingly bad, Abbie isn’t likable and there is a ridiculous amount of background audio hiss punctuating a terrible sound production job that also suffers for overly loud music and muted vocals. The scenario, really, makes no sense and isn’t set up in a very coherent way but, this is horror, we’ll let that slide.
As far as meta takes on the slasher genre go, it is tolerable… Just about. If this is what the movie is going to be, I could live with it. Billy Burke is pretty decent as the hideously scarred family patriarch Roger Bladecut and I really enjoyed Eddie Leavy as the bumbling Glenn.
This, sort of fresh, approach to the genre could work and might be worth a few laughs. It isn’t long, however, before Bloody Axe Wound takes off its slasher mask and reveals something even more hideously mutant and disgusting.. A drama about love and teen friendship. Mere minutes in to taking over the family business, Abbie falls in love with a potential victim. It is all downhill from there.
Simply Awful
Bloody Axe Wound transforms from a poorly executed, unfunny, satirical take on the slasher genre. Into a teen movie overly concerned with relationships and tropey, 80’s, drama shit. If you could take the story of Grease but transform Sandy into the daughter of a slasher villain and Danny into a high school girl who looks far older than her supposed age. You would have Bloody Axe Wound’s plot.
The next 40 minutes consist of Abbie swooning over this girl while attempting to avoid having to murder her by all means. Aside from that plot point, basically, reinforcing her dad’s idea that she would be bad at the job. Writer, director, Matthew John Lawrence attempts to tick every box on the “Gen Z likes this” list in the most unbelievably unauthentic way possible.
Terrible, psuedo-90s, setting? Check. Ridiculously bad alternative music? Check. Poorly written and insultingly scripted LGBTQ characters? Check. Nerdy girl who everyone dislikes? Check. Attempting to make smoking seem cool, again? Check. This whole movie reeks of a grown ass man attempting to write as if he is 17. It is pandering, for lack of a better word.
Bloody Axe Wound has no interest in delivering on its initial promises and turns into something completely different from what was offered. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing if it was done well but it is so poorly executed in every facet that it becomes, almost, insulting to the viewer.
Poor Acting, Scripting, and Direction
Acting is horrendous, almost throughout. Aside from the aforementioned Billy Burke and Eddie Leavy who both do a decent job. Sari Arambulo is okay yet fairly uninspiring. Molly Brown is simply awful. She gives a cheesy “Cool girl” performance that is so terribly done it leaves your toes curling with embarrassment every time she is on screen. Taylor Seupel has a smaller role but is equally awful. Margot Anderson-Song has such a poorly written character that I almost felt sorry for her having to speak her lines. She feels like she is ripped right out of a Diary of a Whimpy Kid movie.
The script is laughably bad. Is it about time we have a conversation regarding how poor the writing is in horror as a whole? The sheer fact that somebody wrote these lines and expected people to read them out loud is insane.
Pacing is an enormous problem. The first 15 minutes are okay but they set you up for something the movie never delivers on. By the thirty minute mark, I felt as though I had been watching for over an hour. That’s how much the “friendship is good” drama bullshit drags on for.
The humour is pretty awful. Again, the script is so bad that expecting laughs would be a bit ridiculous. But moments of actual comedy are so random and poorly placed that it gives you something of a whiplash effect. The horror evaporates early. There is some small effort to bring the whole slasher movie stuff back in later on but it’s tropey and dull. You will likely have mentally drifted off so much, by that point, that it won’t matter in the slightest. There is absolutely zero to praise or recommend, here.
Should You Watch Bloody Axe Wound?
No, under no circumstances should you watch Bloody Axe Wound. This movie has nothing going for it. If it stayed the course as a meta take on the slasher genre with poor writing, bad humour and lacklustre acting, it still would have been a bad movie but, perhaps, watchable. As it stands, it drifts so far away from that into the realm of awful teenage drama with so many technical problems and poor execution that it is impossible to recommend. Ignore the fake reviews that will appear for this one, as all Shudder movies receive a bunch of paid reviews. It is terrible.
