BUZZKILL Review

Tubi is an absolutely phenomenal online streaming service for finding movies that you can't get anywhere else. They have a vast selection of films that rotate onto and off of the provider, and they really put care into curating their cinematic selection. I love to scroll through Tubi for movies and just... see what's out there that I have never watched before. I could spend hours watching popular films there.

Tubi also has original movies! Are they typically any good? They are not! But that never dissuades me from watching them because I love low-budget, independent flicks.

Unlike Tubi's streaming brother Shudder, I can't think of any Tubi originals that really wowed me. Most of them sit in the one-to-two star range and just pass time. But one day, you know? One day, one of them will get me! Maybe today!

One of the newest outings for Tubi originals is Buzzkill, a slasher horror movie that takes place on a college campus and sees a group of sorority sisters getting stalked by a masked killer. All of this is right up my alley.

The shtick to Buzzkill is that the lead character, Nora, saw one of her sisters get killed weeks prior, but Nora was drunk and had fallen in some bushes when it happened. Nora is now convinced she can determine who the killer is by channeling her state of mind from the night of the murder. That is, she needs to become "Drunk Nora" once more.

Her timing is not ideal, as during a party, the killer has decided to strike Nora's sorority once more...

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ Siena Agundong does a fun job as Nora, and she seems to be having a great time playing a stereotypically drunk girl. It's not a performance that is going to be heralded for years to come or anything, but Buzzkill is meant to be a simple, fun flick. And Agundong gives the whacky, gleeful performance that is needed for it.

Siena makes Nora a worthwhile protagonist, even as the screenplay writes her to be someone who you kind of want to throttle due to her decision making and drunk activities. So there is a discrepancy in the role, but it plays more as a duality, and... I don't know... it just worked for me. Nora was supportable, but in a face-palming kind of way. It just flies right.

+ Buzzkill is gory and brutal, even if 99% of the blood is CGI’d. I really can't stress enough how much I wish more of the bloodshed had been practical here, but there is at least some decent blood make-up, I suppose. And I guess it's just the era we live in; for a low budget independent outing, it's cheaper and easier to put the carnage in in post than it is to film it live. I appreciate that, even if I don't like it.

Anyway, what I DO like--this IS an Up--is that Buzzkill has some gnarly kills and action beats. We see sorority sisters getting disembowled and decapitated. The film does not shy away from the violence that the horror aspect needs to have.

- The story is… pretty bad. It’s ultimately a whodunnit, but there are no real clues or much that the viewer is privy to. When you get to the reveal, it's based on several things that Nora has seen that we never have (and a gag about some forehead writing that's at least easy to predict).

I know that whodunnits are a core of the slasher subgenre, so they paid their respects to that when crafting this movie. Still, it all feels like a letdown when we get the answers in the third act. It's just not that cleverly written.

- The characters up to and including Nora herself are flat and one dimensional and not interesting. We don't really get to know anyone, and it feels like the movie is keeping us at arm's length. Several of the characters don't even have a trait on which to hang their hats.

We know Nora has an over-reliance on her personality as "Drunk Nora", but we never see why. We never see a time in her life where "Drunk Nora" has saved her or helped her out, so why does she have so much faith in getting hammered?

Aside from that, we have Beth, who is like a little sister to Nora and has implicit trust in her, but we don't know why. Mika, who is obsessed with cleaning, and that's her whole shtick. Brec Bassinger's Kendall, who is affecting a wild Southern girl accent. And... that's it. The rest of the cast has even less going for them than those items.

I get that the cast is a little loaded with characters and the story is short, but I'd at least love to know why I'm supposed to care when they start getting offed. Give me something to work with, Buzzkill!

OVERALL

Siena Agundong is a joy here, and I like seeing Brec Bassinger in anything ever since her work on Stargirl, even if it's just her putting on a terrible accent. Slashers aren't usually meant to be the smartest of flicks, but I still feel like Buzzkill could have done a little better for itself.

🍿 SCORE = 32 / 100