Originally posted on 4/21/19
KILLER UNICORN (Indican Pictures, 2018) is kind of like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, except instead of a bunch of teens being stalked by the Gorton's fisherman after they run over him a year earlier and leave him for dead, it's a bunch of extremely flamboyant drag queens being stalked by a buff stud in a unicorn mask because they kicked the crap out of him for raping their friend Danny a year earlier and left him for dead.
Except he wasn't dead, and now Killer Unicorn is haunting the LGBTQ club scene and picking off members of that particular clique one by one in horrible ways while working his way back to his original victim, Danny.
When Danny (Alejandro La Rosa) realizes what's going on (the severed head in his closet is a big tip-off), he notifies everyone else that they're all on the hit list. Then they decide to get together at the big "Brooklyn Annual Enema Party" that night and use Danny as bait to bring Killer Unicorn into the open, and kill him.
It's sort of a comedy, except instead of gags we're just supposed to laugh at the ultra-camp, over-the-top drag queens like Jess J*zz, C*nt Stanley, Madame Mortimer, et al, as they exchange ribald dialogue and sexual innuendos in as stereotypical a fashion as they can muster.
The "regular" gay guys like Danny seem positively normal by comparison, although it's Danny and his new friend "Puppy Pup" (José D. Álvarez) who get to have the big romantic softcore gay sex scene. As a whole, the cast performs in a pleasingly uninhibited and, dare I say, natural fashion.
The murder scenes are violent, gory, and rather ugly in contrast to all of this, and are played more for ironic than comedic effect. Again, however, the personalities of the drag queens are so outlandish that even here they can't help but lend a kind of curdled humor to their own violent death scenes.
Early scenes of the first victim's memorial party in the bar where Danny works focus on the group's decadent party lifestyles, an atmosphere that will reoccur in the film's second half during the raucous "enema party" in a crowded, dimly-lit club.
Here, first-time director Drew Bolton will manage some interesting low-budget visuals while building a fair amount of suspense amidst the chaos, especially in the scene where all the lights in the club are flashing on and off as the killer keeps popping up unexpectedly. Through it all, the film tries its best to shock us with its outrageousness although we're already seen much of this kind of stuff before.
KILLER UNICORN wasn't clicking for me at all on first viewing, so a second one really helped. While I first took it as an unsuccessful attempt to create a synthesis of "Liquid Sky" and John Waters, I came to realize that it's simply its own silly, mostly harmless, sometimes shockingly violent little horror/slasher comedy that you may find mildly entertaining.
Preorder on DVD or VOD at Indican Pictures
TECH SPECS
Runtime: 74 Minutes
Format: 2:35:1
Sound: Dolby DIGITAL 5.1
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre: Horror
Oh look, another "GAY!!!" film that feels the need to wear the main protagonists' orientations and corresponding proclivities on its sleeve in the most contrived and irritating way possible, in contrast to the 99.9% of eeeeevil, oppressive "heteronormative" films whose characters' orientations, whatever they may be, are just sort of there in the background, rarely affecting the story in any kind of meaningful way. As in, you know, the way it SHOULD be unless the story itself centers on the orientations and self-discovery of its protagonists...
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