Reed Alexander's Horror Review of 'Don't Kill It' (2016)

This movie was made for riffing... Or, at least it had better have been, that's what I spent the whole movie doing. This movie was utter nonsense and Dolph Lundgren's cowboy accent is its icing on the cake. If the person who directed this expected anything less than riffing gold, I’m not sure what he was trying to accomplish.

So, the movie was fun, but it was a weird kind of brutal fun. Yeah, it was gory and silly, but there are scenes that make the rest of the movie uncomfortable to laugh at. And this is why I can't give this movie an easy pass. I'm sorry, but dark and funny only works if the dark parts are funny. Just to give you an idea about how dark and unfunny this movie can get -without going into spoilers- the gruesome death of children and animals. That and these creepy fucking almost rapey scenes.

But the rest was done right. Exploding body parts, lots of gore, completely asinine themes, and Dolph Lundgren talking like a mix of Elvis and John Wayne. Screw the rice paper thin story and just suspend all disbelief. The atmosphere is done right. The overarching theme works well. The acting is actually pretty solid, so long as they were being intentionally hammy. And fuck me, what a breakneck pace. I guess I do kinda recommend this movie if only barely.

SPOILERS!!!

Let’s go over the okay/not okay moments in this movie and be the judge for yourself. The demon possesses granny, sending granny on the cutest god damn killing rampage ever. Okay. Possessing a child trying to protect her frightened sister only to have her kill her frighten sister. Not okay. Three cops triangle fuck each other's heads with firearms. Okay. Opening the movie by killing a dog. Not okay.

If you can’t quite figure out by the description, the way the demon possesses people is by getting them to kill the person it’s currently inhabiting. If you kill the person it’s possessing, you immediately get possessed. You can imagine the wild ride you could set up with that. Honestly, you could go either way. Dark and brutal like The Thing or funny and brutal like Deathgasm.

You see, the whole movie had me confused as to what it was trying to accomplish. On Netflix. it's labeled "Horror Comedy" but then it opens up with a dead dog and two whole families getting massacred in some pretty brutal ways. Not...not really that funny. Not even riff worthy. Two guys just wholesale slaughter their wives and children. So, I'm thinking mislabeled. Nope, this is immediately followed by the most ridiculous scene where Dolph tries to sell his demon hunting skills to the town sheriff. They pull the 'and just one more thing' about ten damn times. It's pure zany nonsense.

So you have a better idea about what’s going on. A demon possessing a little girl is fine if you're The Exorcist and are trying to make 1970s audiences puke on themselves. Demon possessed little girl is also fine for comedy if it's totally over the top. Demon forcing girl to commit murder, then taking over her body, and killing her sister...that's some dark shit.

Then there was just these creepy ass scenes, where the demon is trying to get the female lead to kill it so it can possess her body. It does some pretty bad touch shit when it does this. It's fucking cringe-worthy and even my best riffing material just left me feeling dirty like a used cum sock.

So, it didn't quite do dark and funny right. But it was just slightly on the right side of funny. I guess that makes it okay.