A 40-minute short slasher film from Josh Ludwick (writer/co-director) and Kelly Kalusha (co-director/actor) SLOP is a film that shows a lot of promise while being held back by its makers lack of experience and I would assume, budget.
We start off with the hulking, skin masked killer, Slop (Jacob Phipps) disposing of two bodies. This is interspersed with flashbacks to how they came to die. There are also some hints at even darker things happening with regard to the corpse of the young woman.
The bodies are discovered when the police come looking for a missing child. A TV news team arrives as well but are kept out of the taped off barn. Determined to get exclusive footage they come back after dark. Unfortunately for them so does the killer.
There’s a lot to like here, as noted the killer, Slop, is an imposing beast. Modeled in appearance after the original Leatherface only bigger, he’s a legit threat even without any supernatural powers. The kills are quite bloody and the effects, while few, are well done.
SLOP is also well done from a technical perspective. There’s a couple of obvious edits and a line or two that are inaudible but that’s all I noticed. Given this is the first or second short for just about all involved that’s pretty impressive.
The flaws are the usual ones for the genre, made a bit worse due to inexperience. There are some seriously bad choices made by some of the characters. I mean rim be damned, I’d drive on the flat until I reached town before I’d stop knowing the killer was out there somewhere. Also, I wouldn’t be wandering around a killer’s dumping grounds at night without a weapon, or at least a friend with a carry permit. But these, like the variable acting, are relatively minor flaws and we’ve all seen worse in films with much bigger budgets.
SLOP is currently playing festival dates. You can check the film’s Facebook page for updates.