BLOOD WIDOW (2014) Review

Directed by: Jeremiah Buckhalt
Written by: Chad Coup, Ian H. Davis
Starring: Danielle Lilley, Brandon Kyle Peters, Christopher de Padua, Emily Cutting, Gabrielle Ann Henry

"DIE IN SILENCE"

Let's see what we've got here... Isolated house in the country? Check. No cell phone signal? Check. Masked killer? Check. Group of painfully stereotyped friends? Double check.
Yep you guessed it, it's a slasher flick. Slashers have long been a staple of the horror genre and although the 'golden age' is long gone, a solidly put-together modern slasher can still be an enjoyable experience. LAID TO REST, THE ORPHAN KILLER and the HATCHET series are all fine examples of good slashers made in the last decade. The question here is; does BLOOD WIDOW deserve to be added to that list?

Laurie (Lilley) and Hugh (Peters) are a young couple who have just purchased a holiday home away from the hustle and bustle of the big city (in other words; the middle of fucking nowhere). Sure it's a bit of a fixer-upper but it's nice and quiet and the closest house is the run-down place next door which happens to be abandoned. Or is it? (hint: of course it fucking isn't!) To celebrate the purchasing of their new house Hugh decides to invite all of his friends around for a party, but first his friends decide to go explore the 'abandoned' place next door. After all, nothing can go wrong. Right? So they go in, fuck the place up a little and then leave to get ready because it's party time! Unfortunately for them they've disturbed the 'abandoned' structure's resident, and she doesn't appreciate her neighbors and their loud music. But rather than calling in a noise complaint to the cops, she's going to take care of them in her own brutal way.

In case you hadn't already guessed it BLOOD WIDOW is a slasher which follows the tried and true formula which slashers have been doing for decades. But that's part of its charm. It doesn't try to be anything more than what it is, and for a low budget indie effort it does a pretty solid job and has pretty much everything you could expect to see. But as we all know there are only really two things audiences care about when it comes to slasher films; the villain and the gore.The writing can be horrible, the acting can be almost non-existent, the pacing can be all over the place, but as long as the killer and the effects look good all can be forgiven.

Fortunately in the case of BLOOD WIDOW the killer looks great and so does the gore. That's a double bonus right there. I can't stand it when all a slasher can offer in the effects department is some off-camera stabbing and a few blood sprays on the wall, but here we get a smorgasbord of pain. There's decapitations, broken bones, guts tumbling out and even a flogging. There's even some skin, because as we all know the best slashers are the ones with a little good ol' fashioned nudity.
It would be easy to sit here and criticize the cliched plot, the (heavily) stereotyped characters and the villain's paper-thin back-story, but you know what? None of that really bothers me at all. And do you know why? Because it's a fucking slasher. And it does what it's supposed to do and that's good enough for me.