…not to be confused with “Grotesque” the 2009 Japanese torture-porn movie. This is a different terrible movie. This is “Grotesque the 2022 Canadian indie horror about a likeable girl with a gigantic nose who has friends that love her and while she’s capable of fixing her freaky nose and getting a different job with fewer toxic shitheads she opts instead to zero-in on some basic-bitch stereotypes and kill them” movie.
And it isn’t actually terrible. It isn’t GREAT, but it’s completely watchable and a lot of fun and the more that I think about it the movie kind of is great. Indie horror. It’s not Casafrigginblanca… but I may love this movie anyway.
Mildred has a comicly-big nose and lives in MeanGirlistan and works with an even mix of nice people and complete psychos. She has no poker-face (and no I’m not going to say it’s a FIRE poker face, that would be beneath me) when people hassle her, she just shows her sadness and anger free and easy. She also manages to surround herself with truly awful people so you’d think she would have some practice growing a thicker skin? Also-x2, she’s obsessed with serial killers. Not a red flag but kind of a slightly-on-the-red-side flag. She finally decides to book a nosejob… though with a nose like THAT it’s less of a job and more like a noseCareer (that one Wasn’t beneath me)… the doctor, however, is a total sleazy-weazy who botches the surgery. So naturally, Mildred decides “Hey now might be the opportune time to try my hand at killing everyone who crosses my path!”
Awesome! Go get ’em, Mildred! Fuck this town!
Mildred arms herself with all manner of sharp and pointy and blunt and pencilly and pool cue-y and golf clubby instruments and cuts a bloody path through her shitty little town. The filmmakers lean hard into the “Adorable and lovable psychopath” angle as Mildred dons a mask and frolics from murder to murder, skips through the woods and is generally just a textbook example of “perky.” Neat. She’s got an axe to grind (and plant into the prom queen’s face), and no one is safe. “Hey, remember dating me for a week in 10th grade?” she asks a guy who’s home she invades while he’s sound asleep at 3 in the afternoon. “You cheated on me!” crunch-crunch-chop. “Hey! That gin and tonic you served me the other night was flat!” stab-stab-blopp. “Oh my god, you’re that rockstar I was crazy in love with. I was drunk and vulnerable on your tour bus, why didn’t molest me? I was there for it!” testicle-chop-club. “You were mean to me at work and you suck at life!” disembowel-disembowel-skip-rope-with-entrails.
I didn’t expect to like it, but this was kind of an awesome movie. Either that or it’s the quirky and darkly-humorous mediocre movie but one I was desperately in the mood for. It’s free! On Tubi! I Love Free on Tubi! This one will be a hit with all the goth and goth-adjacent women who were picked on in high school. If this movie were a bigger-budget lesser-indie hit they’d be selling “Grotesque” lunchboxes in Hot Topic.