Founders Day
Founders Day
Starring Naomi Grace, Devin Druid, William Russ, Amy Hargreaves
Directed by Erik Bloomquist
In the days before a heated mayoral election in a small town, the citizens are rocked by a series of unsolved murders committed by someone wearing a Founders Day mask and donning a gavel that extracts into a knife. As the body count piles up, concerns over the election and, more importantly, the Founders Day celebration rise and the candidates are concerned that it'll be canceled entirely - or there'll be no one left in the town to cast their vote.
The Good:
"Founders Day" does give a pierced look at the current political climate in America today, where tensions are at an all-time high and people are losing their ever-loving minds. This is essentially a live-action "South Park" episode: namely the one where they hold class election and they have to vote for either a Douche or a Turd Sandwich - and this movie epitomizes those choices, much like in real life.
There's a lot of death. Like, a lot. I lost count but the body count piles up quite nicely into a comfortable pillar of bodies that will easily satisfy the slasher lover.
While this film is bad - it's really, really bad - if you watch it with the right group of people and the right...um...sauce so to speak, you might find this to be one of the best comedies of the year.
The Bad:
This ChatGBT written story (I mean it might not be, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't) is so incredibly nonsensical that it doesn't just border on parody, but it seems to reinvent the meaning. There are numerous head-scratching moments (like when after a girl is witness to a murder, she runs into feuding mobs of political protestors who all gather around her in a circle because...um...) that will give you a headache if you give even a Planck length of thought (I had to look it up, it's the smallest unit of measurement).
The killer was glaringly obvious from the beginning, as the film adheres to the #1 rule of horror movies (not the one from "Scream" but I guess from my own list) which I won't get into because it'll spoil things, and even though I highly don't recommend this I don't want to give spoilers out, but suffice it to say the killer was easily identifiable from the start (well, one of the killers...oops I spoiled that).
Speaking of the killer(s), their motive for murder makes absolutely no sense. The "Scooby-Doo" ending where they monologue about their reasoning was met with resounding laughter in the theater I was in, so at least I knew it wasn't my overly jaded critics' mind that felt that way. The entire ending made no sense, and I think it was trying to tell a story but I just didn't see it.
The killer's mask was laughably bad. Plastic, generic, like someone found it at the Spirit Halloween store. Not scary in the slightest.
The actors were all too over-the-top, too melodramatic, and their motivations were all over the place. After their kids are literally murdered, the adults treat it like political theater and don't really care, which might be a sarcastic look at how politics rule over all, but not even that point was fully flushed out. Then there's the main girl who was obviously cast because she could scream, but her scream was literally ear-shattering. I had to cover my ears when she screamed because it was so loud and piercing. My glasses even cracked when she screamed, and I think she's responsible for my car windows cracking too, and not the group of kids who were in the parking lot with baseball bats (that actually didn't happen but you get my drift).
The Summary:
If you get the right group of people and the right "motivation" you might find some enjoyment in "Founders Day," but if you're going into it hoping to find a new classic slasher movie, you might want to vote for the other guy.
The Score: D-
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