Hooptober... And Then There Were Nine

23rd Kill

Horror and sci-fi geekdom has developed to a point now, having fed upon itself over the decades, where there's an entire post-modern phenomenon of deeply referential, ironically comedic pop culture artefacts. Anyone can watch a movie like Turbo Kid, but if you have spent a few decades at least steeped in the potent broth of 80's genre obsessing and rewatching and buying bad T-shirts and impressing the opposite sex deeply, you are going to enjoy it on a whole different plane. Wait, let me amend that: you will "get" the referentialism, but that will either enhance your enjoyment or possibly annoy the hell out of you.

Me? I just like post-apocalyptic stories and every genre identity that Turbo Kid co-opts, and the bitchin' synth soundtrack only makes it all feel better. I understand that the self-consciousness of this movie and others of its ilk like Psycho Goreman may cause some to cringe, but that would require some sort of sense of embarrassment, and as my wife could tell you, I have none. I seemed to lose it about the same time I had kids. I went from try-hard hipster to unashamed slob overnight, and I've been perfecting that identity ever since. And will continue to do so until the day I die.

What I do really love about this movie, though, is its determination to create a lived-in, fleshed-out post-apocalyptic fantasy world out of a very small budget. In that sense, the film feels entirely earnest, and if nothing else, that would win me over. Sometimes, to see what filmic illusions some people can conjure with the sparsest of raw materials is a miraculous thing, a testament to the power of film as an artform.

I also really like the bucketloads of blood and gore that pour out of everyone in this movie to a ridiculous degree.

Best Kill (may contain traces of spoiler)

I really liked the guy who gets his jaw pulled off and then shoved in his eyes, but the final kill of the buzzsaw dude which results in a shower of blood, and Turbo Kid kisses his robot love under an umbrella while viscera falls all around them in slow motion, man, it doesn't get much more romantic than that.