I don’t remember where I heard about this one, but after five vanity cards I’m ready to plug into this four-company production (in association with four more companies) known as Slayers. With this many production companies involved I’ll just bet it’s going to be the Citizen Kane of horror comedies!
So Slayers are special super vampire hunters. Joan of Arc, Benjamin Franklin, Buffy, Billy the Kid, and the narrator of this movie, Cleetus von Squiggletooth. There’s also the Dracula-Bait, “The Stream Team,” a group of self-important Gen-Z internet influencers. I was really suspecting they were the vampires… because they suck. Influencers… the self-publisher version of reality TV. Imagine “useless” had an annoying younger brother, who made a fortune from taking dick pics, that would be almost as useless as influencers. Anyway, this is the four-piece “first girl” of this movie.
These internet self-publisher uselesses come across a von Squiggletooth roadblock. They get out to diffuse the situation by explaining to Cleetus just how pretend-famous they are, but Cleetus tells em “Nah. I’m just stopping your vanity wagon to tell you that you suck.” Oh, and to give them a copy of his ‘zine (remember ‘zines? It’s the Gen-X version of internet influencer).
So far this movie reads like a vampirey version of “Zombieland” (it’s that trendy quasi-retro 4th-wall-breaky horror comedy trope that’s the reason for the “Slick” description on Neflulumax), but I’m into it so far, let’s see where it goes. All the Uselesses are invited to some rich guy’s mansion to do something entertainmenty, I forget what, and the only one who notices that something is amiss is the professional video game player celebrity girl (because that’s the one the audience will identify with most, because we’re all fucking slackers who just want to sit home in our Hot Topic 90’s skateboarder pajamas and play video games all day and call it “work”). She’s the outsider hero character, and you can tell because she’s the one in a flannel shirt, teenager jewelry and the winter-hat-all-the-time costume. That and the lame premise of “I’m a rich philanthropist who wants to give you my company because you have a lot of click-like-subscribes and I’m going to move to Oompa Loompaland” is a dead giveaway for something fishy, even the vape-addicted slacker can see it.
Hat-wearing sad-sack wants to go home. She has her semi-finals video game death match to do (for fucks’ sake kid go to school and learn a trade), but aw. No signal, no Uber. No bueno! Oh but hey! Cleetus (his actual name is Eliot, but you know, might as well just be named Kyle) is here to be her Rupert Giles! Neat!
Be sure to sit through the initial credits because every horror comedy ever has those pretend credits that turn into the “Don’t Leave The Theater Just Yet!” scene. You know it’s coming, pretty sure no one is going to bother reaching for the remote because they know that trope is on it’s way.
Mido slept through it.