SXSW Film Review: Snatchers (Stephen Cedars, Benji Kleiman, 2019)

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SXSW Film Review: Snatchers (Stephen Cedars, Benji Kleiman, 2019)

Posted on

11 Mar 2019

by

Gary

You can never have too much blood said Snatchers directors Stephen Cedars and Benji Kleiman with a glinting of the eyes and a rolling of the sleeves. While that is a solid slogan for the Red Cross, truth be told, having buckets of the red stuff plastering the walls doesn’t otherwise give you a good slasher film. What does is the concomitant ritual sacrifice and lampooning of a social trope that we have all agreed should die over and over again until the rewind button breaks. Enter horny teenagers who can’t wait to have sex. Where Snatchers diverges from other direct-to-VHS scripts is its excellent pacing, acting, and imaginative (to put it mildly) set up.

The story, which isn’t the star here, goes like: teenagers f$&@, girl gets pregnant, guy runs away, mom freaks out, cool kids fold and wilt while nerdy Magic-playing ex-BFF steps up. Also Mayan Aliens wreck everyone. This is basically Juno with heartfelt character growth ripped out and transplanted with headless corpses and dismembered limbs.

It is of course the aliens from Mexico (space aliens, that is) that are the cornerstone of every joke here. From vag-cannon to blender/mulcher, stop-signs to cat flights, the directors pay tribute to touchstones like Evil Dead and Shaun of the Dead but create fresh and hilarious scenes of the their own. They rightly chose to do everything with animatronics – not that the head chomping aliens were extremely well built, but as the actors testified, the physicality lends itself to more believable acting than green screen and tennis ball. The best part is that you barely get any breathers over the course of the film. One can clearly see what six years of script and screen-writing does to economize even a wild slasher run. Sure, it is not a slugfest a la Marx Brothers where the next joke hit just as hard as your brain was still reeling from the last comedic concussion. But aside from a momentary lull in the fridge, the film unfurls in a highly efficient but natural pace. Basically, go watch this if you are at all interested in a good late night slasher. Or a daylight slasher. Cuz aliens don’t wait until it’s dark.

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