PopHorror Let's Get Scared
2015’s The Slashening was a solid, hilarious horror/comedy film filled with enough gags, gore and winks and nods to the audience to satisfy even the most ardent of Troma fans. Finally arriving on Blu-ray, writer/director Brandon Bassham’s (Shakespeare’s Shitstorm) 2021 gonzo, irreverent sequel, Slashening: The Final Beginning takes it up a notch, while managing to remain fresh.
Synopsis:
“Five years after “The Slashening,” 22-year-old Madison Santangeli moves to Brooklyn to start a new life in the wake of her father’s suicide.”
Have a look at the trailer!
Madison Santangeli (Addie Weyrich; Crush) is at a crossroads in life. After her guilt ridden pizzeria owner father dies accidentally (after no less than 3 failed suicide attempts!), she finds herself unable to move on, even with frequent “bath tub therapy,” and talks with her bestie Kim (Rasheda Crockett; The Changeling).
Opting for a group therapy approach, she joins a group of troubled young adults, guided by someone with a connection to her father’s past: Pat (Patrick Foy; News, News, News) who lost both an eye AND a penis in the Long Island Slashening Murders, but somehow survived. Asked out by a hipster from group, who plays the jug in a truly terrible band, Scott (Jack Frederick; Divorce) tries to help Madison out of her shell, but soon falls victim to an eerily familiar sack headed killer.
One by one, Madison’s therapy friends are stalked and murdered by the mysterious killer. Is it the Pat obsessed Cher (Madonna Refugia; Kingpin Katie)? The spoiled rich girls Bex (Jamie Lutz; The Butterfly Effect) and Viv (Jean Louise O’Sullivan; Fiancé Killer)?? Overzealous ally Dylan (McManus Woodend; Rocksteppy)?? Or grieving father Ben (Marcus Bishop-Wright; The Blacklist)??
Produced by the ever present Lloyd Kaufman (who also cameos as a martial arts expert), Slashening: The Final Beginning is everything you’d expect from a Troma film. Copious gore, absurd violence, boobs, and of course jokes, and most if not all of them work spectacularly well! There’s plenty of off kilter social commentary at play here too, at various times the film skewers *deep breath* class warfare, the patriarchy, sexual consent, gender roles, kink shaming, group therapy, millennials, influencer culture, white privilege, gentrification, mansplaining, entitled rich girls, and the art world, among other topical subjects.
This is a horror/comedy after all, so this all happens with generous helpings of: nailguns, dick dockings, ukulele beatings, spooning, cranial bong hits, machetes, claws to the groin, and even some auto-erotic asphyxiation! Because of all of the above, and sometimes in spite of it, Slashening: The Final Beginning manages to take everything that made the first film so good, and re-spin it so it’s not just a re-hashing of the same jokes. Not a continuation of The Slashening, Slashening: The final Beginning is its own film, and a hilarious one at that!
The Troma blu-ray, is a normal, standard release, the transfer looks great, as it should for a recent flick. Extras include: commentary with Bassham, two of Bassham’s short films, trailers (including for the long awaited—when in the Hell are we getting a physical release Lloyd?—Shakespeare’s Shitstorm), and a hilarious Oscar ceremony opening sequence, along with the requisite Kaufman intro.
Irreverent, gross, and chock full of adolescent humor, Slashening: The Final Beginning is the most fun you’ll ever have at therapy! And you’ll learn way more than you ever wanted to about the after effects of penis amputation!
Troma’s Blu-ray release of Slashening: The Final Beginning is available now from fine retailers, and it’s also available streaming on Tubi and Troma NOW.
