Granny
Directed by Boris Pavlovsky
Brain Damage Films

Granny is an 80's styled slasher flick that is surprisingly effective albeit incredibly simplistic. The film is under an hour long and doesnt offer much in the way of plot but it does manage to pack in a few gory kills and a few twists along the way. You'll probably see them coming from a mile away, but the film manages to be entertaining none the less.

The basic idea behind the movie is a group of friends are drinking and talking and basically initiating a new member of the group and showing her what makes the group click. Apparently what makes them click is drinking and talking and the chatter is fairly inane at times. When the conversation turns to everyone's paranoia's, a member of the group comes up with the idea of showing everyone his paranoia. Everyone leaves while he sets up his skit. When the group returns the friend is nowhere to be found and members of the group begins to be killed by a granny with an axe and a few more creative weapons along the way. It's fairly typical slasher fare but the kills are bloody and I'll admit that I definitely cheered when one of the characters was stabbed in the eyeballs with knitting needles.

The film ends with not one, but two twists and you definitely can feel that it is coming. It is still effective though and is a nice change completely throwing out the supernatural element that the story sort of steers you in earlier. The story certainly wont wow you, but it manages to be entertaining and keep your mind off of your troubles for an hour. After all that is something of what a movie is meant to be, escapism.

The acting is all over the board with this one. For the most part it is decent but some of the writing is just pointless and really doesnt go anywhere. In most movies of this type the groups dont talk. They are usually having sex and doing stupid things. I guess this movie shows a more intelligent type of person being the victim in a slasher film. The acting is handled well but I think the writing could have been a bit smoother. Some of the dialog is incredibly stiff and just plain unrealistic.

Unfortunately the source material for this DVD seems to have been a VHS copy of the movie. It's a shame too because the video quality seems like it originally might have been quite good. It looks much better than your average shot on video low budget horror film and could have been a lot sharper given better source materials.

At the end of the day Granny is an entertaining film that should keep any slasher fans attention for the hour long running time. If you are expecting anything new from the slasher genre, you certainly wont find it here.

Order Granny here!