Recent horror films to have received the majority of critical plaudits tend to have been the narratively ambitious and relatively ‘subtle’ creations of directors such as Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse), Jennifer Kent (The Babadook) and Ari Aster (Hereditary , Midsommar).  Other directors choose to locate their works in a different, more disreputable tradition.  This is the tradition of the splatter movie or gore film.  The form reached its apotheosis in the 1980s, partly spurred by innovations in practical special effects technology, the beginnings of home video and, unintentionally, promoted further by a moral panic in the UK and elsewhere.

Traditionally horror movies have used their violent passages in plot or character development or as punctuation points.  Splatter movies are set apart by their emphasis on the gory elements as set pieces and spectacle and a USP to draw in fans and audiences.  They have never been monolithic and only at their worst a matter of simply stringing gory sequences together.  Beyond the seriousness of George A Romero and the mean-spiritedness of some stalk and slash movies, there is the phenomenon of the fun gore film.  Most famously typified by Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise, this is the tradition Lucky Cerruti’s Freak locates itself in.

The movie (which clocks in at a surprisingly short 52 minutes) winks at the audience and its effects, creatively realized on a budget, evince squeamish giggles rather than real shocks.  The story concerns a group of teens who spend their vacation in the countryside in spite of a local urban (rural?) legend of a hideously deformed man left to fend for himself in the woods and has turned psychotic and cannibalistic.  Cerutti pulls off the rather tricky feat of combining the EC Comics campfire archness of the fun gore film with a proper concern for his protagonists’ fates and the pathos of his villain is finely defined.

Despite the limitations of budget, the film looks good and exploits its attractive New York State countryside exteriors effectively. Performances are amateurish and enthusiastic but this could be said for the earliest films of Raimi, Romero, Wes Craven and others.  Cerruti manages to bring in a Monster and the Girl element.  The final minutes of the film suggest that an emotional connection between Final Girl Jenna (Sasha Van Cott)and Arthur Crenshaw, the pitiable Freak, has been established and maybe saved her.  Then again maybe not.

A lot of the positive press for Freak has centred on its creature effects.  These combine a puppet figure used in full body shots with close-ups of head and hands utilizing excellent prosthetic props.   Realizing its antagonist like this is a good decision and prevents Freak, with its stalk and slash structure,  from simply becoming a cheap Hatchet knock-off.  Instead it enters the category of monster films whose villains are often more intriguing.

Freak is great fun and its lucidity suggests that Lucky Cerruti is a nascent professional film-maker and not someone to be stuck in fan film limbo. To pick up the DVD version of the film drop by Dead Vision Productions here.