A boy deals with the loss of his mother by creating a dangerous relationship with a monster rumored to live in the woods.
“Slapface” is nothing more than a feature-length bullying PSA under the guise of a horror film. Ultimately, it achieves neither goal, as the finished result amounts to nothing more than an assemblage of unnatural, forced acting and incompetent filmmaking.
The story focuses on a young boy, Lucas (August Maturo), and his older brother Tom (Mike Manning), who recently lost both parents in a car accident. Tom works in construction, and Lucas attends a local school. One afternoon, Lucas buries a photo of himself and his mother on the grounds of a supposedly haunted and abandoned hospital. Shortly after, he encounters an inhuman monster in the building’s basement. Initially, he runs from the creature but eventually, they form a strange alliance, and he meets the entity daily in the hospital basement. Over time, people in Lucas’s life begin to mysteriously die until he realizes it is killing those it deems a threat to him. Now Lucas must confront the creature before it kills anyone else.
Roger Corman once said, “Never show your monster in the daylight,” and for good reason. Under cover of night, monsters and demons are scary because they can hide in the shadows in the basement, where no sensible human would dare go, but the creature in “Slapface” likes to casually walk around during the day, checking out people’s houses and damaging their cars because that’s what scary monsters do. The creature’s face is a witch mask you could buy at a local Halloween-themed store, and the performer underneath the disguise never once exhibits frightening or sinister behavior; they simply walk around, conspicuously, forcing you to question Lucas’s overly dramatic introductory reaction to them.
The acting in “Slapface” is contrived and unconvincing. Nothing is more cringeworthy than watching someone try to force themselves to appear natural when they simply cannot achieve the desired result. August Maturo at least seems to be giving it his all; the direction or lack thereof has all the signs of an amateur filmmaker who either doesn’t know how to direct or simply doesn’t care. Tom spends his evenings at the local bar getting drunk, and there he meets Anna (Libe Barer), a local witch, and they quickly become a couple. In no time, she begins questioning Lucas’s strange behavior, not because it’s the logical thing to do, after all, what 12-year-old doesn’t talk about monsters, but because the script tells her to and because her line of questioning will help move the plot forward.
After the closing credits, the filmmakers insert a dialogue that says they don’t condone bullying and reach out to someone you trust if you are being bullied. This seems so misplaced for a horror movie. After all, Brian De Palma didn’t include an anti-bullying message at the end of “Carrie.” Of course, nobody in their right mind would tolerate bullying, but throughout the film, Lucas is continuously beaten down by two twin girls who enjoy treating him as such. Director Jeremiah Kipp isn’t content with one scene of him being terrorized; no, he has to show his victimization several times, just in case you didn’t get it the first time, so he can continue bashing you over the head with a metaphorical hammer because subtlety is not in his strong suit.
The ending of “Slapface” has to be one of the most emotionally and mentally demoralizing finales I have seen. The film never has an upside; never once do Lucas or Tom look forward to the future after the death of their parents; everything is disheartening and sad. The film’s title comes from a game the brothers play as a way for Tom to deal with the guilt of having to sometimes discipline Lucas; they each take turns slapping each other in the face, with the slaps becoming harder and harder. This element makes no sense whatsoever, even when Tom tries, unsuccessfully, to explain it to Anna, and it only further illustrates director Jeremiah Kipp’s inability to handle mature themes. Maybe next time, Mr. Kipp could just set out and make a good old-fashioned horror film without the morality message shoved down our throats.
Now available on DVD
