Main cast: Matilda Lutz (Elisa), Francesco Russo (Fabrizio), Peppino Mazzotta (Riccardo), William Merrick (Mark), Yulia Sobol (Sofia), Alida Baldari Calabria (Chiara), Cristina Donadio (The Mayor), and Francesca Cavallin
Directors: Roberto De Feo and Paolo Strippoli

Elisa is pregnant, so her supportive mom asks her to come over to her parents’ place in Calabria—yes, A Classic Horror Story is an Italian movie—for a pleasant little abortion. After all, our darling can’t afford to raise a brat on her own, so it’s time for a some wire hanger-ing!

Using a carpool app, she finds herself in an RV with Fabrizio, a travel blogger, as well as soon-to-be-newlyweds Mark and Sofia. Eventually, idiot Mark does some driving while it’s his turn to drive, and oops, the RV kisses a tree super passionately.

Weirdly enough, when they all come to, they find themselves in a clearing somewhere in a forest. What has happened?

Oh look, there’s a cabin. These people must have seen those Evil Dead films, because they are reluctant to snoop around inside it.

Okay, I’m just half-joking. Of course they peer inside, to find gruesome scarecrows, murals, and pig heads speared on spikes. Not appreciating that perhaps pastoral folks have a different culture and lifestyle from theirs, these city yuppies decide to stick to their RV for the night…

… Only to be targeted by what seems like cult members with a taste for gleeful torture and dismemberment of their victims. Talk about a once in a lifetime experience—bet Elisa wishes that she had just rent a car or something!

Okay, I don’t speak Italian, so perhaps something is lost by reading the subtitles, but is this movie a deliberate homage to classic “I’m going to die in hillbilly land!” slasher films? The whole thing plays out straight, it seems, but I do wonder whether perhaps some wry humor or playful self awareness are lost in the translation from Italian to English subtitles.

This is because this movie feels like a mosaic composed of remade scenes of those classic films, most notably the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and its sequel. The sole concessions to present day norms are the mentions of apps, the occasional found footage-like scenes, and the obligatory portrayal of society as a bunch of narcissistic, edgy people glued to their phones and incapable of individual thought.

Not that this made from déjà vu quality is necessarily a bad thing, of course, as the movie on the whole has some beautifully shot and lit scenes that give it some semblance of artistry.

Also, Elisa makes for a pretty good kick-ass heroine, although unfortunately she and the rest of the characters are so blandly one-dimensional that they are quite forgettable at the end of the day. Not to mention, she’s the only one of the main cast that has some semblance of a proper back story, so it’s not really a spoiler to say that she’s the final girl.

In the end, this is an alright movie. The acting is fine, the gore is solid, there is some atmosphere… the whole thing, to me, is a competently put together package. It succeeds in doing enough to be entertaining, although sadly it doesn’t get to do more in order to be memorable.

The post A Classic Horror Story (2021) first appeared on HOT SAUCE REVIEWS.