Cotton On To The New Fashion Trend!

Slaxx is a super entertaining horror-satire from Canadian film-maker Elza Kephart and writer Patricia Gomez. Blending slasher vibes with an eco-conscious tale and delivered with some 80's chic style schlock.

With a runtime of 77 minutes, the film delves straight to the core of the story with a cold open that seems somewhat misplaced, to begin with.

We're then introduced to a fodder of characters that we're not expected to relate to, or even remotely like, but each caricature is aptly played by the good looking cast.

They're all sales assistants at a trendy flagship clothing store, cruising around with their headsets communicating with one another, regurgitating insufferable dialogue that had me rolling my eyes whilst gleefully anticipating which one of the self-righteous cretins would die first.

Enter doe-eyed and idealistic young sales assistant Libby, (expertly played by Romane Denis), who's aura exuberates 'Final Girl' tendencies. She is hired to help with the launch of the revolutionary Super-Shaper Jeans that will conform to your body shape; in more ways than one.

All the staff working at the false-hearted 'ethically attitude forward' CCC is preparing overnight during a (trigger word) 'lockdown', readying for a plethora of hipsters and Instagram influencers to invade on to the store to be the first to pounce on the killer new product.

Needless to say, and for some sobering reasons I won't divulge, the CCC store and its employees are in for a reckoning in the shape of a possessed pair of jeans.

The film slightly echos Peter Strickland's 2018 In Fabric, but less A24 envelope-pushing and probably sits more comfortably between 2010's killer tire movie Rubber and 2019's Killer Sofa. All films which you must see - and heck, if you want to go down a rabbit hole of possessed inanimate object movies also seek out 1977's Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, 1990's I Bought A Vampire Motorcycle, 1991's The Refrigerator, 1996's Killer Condom and for the Amityville fans - Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes (1989) and Amityville 6: It's About Time (1992).

Anyway... I digress...

Overall the film boasts some nice colourful cinematography, snappy editing, a couple of decent kills and the VFX of the killer jeans is so comically cute! But for me personally, with such a bonkers premise, I felt that the colour palette could have been more neon and fashionista, the deaths should have been more over the top and the gore a lot more graphic, but I'm assuming budgetary restraints are to blame here.

SLAXX is currently showing on SHUDDER.

Review by Craig Fisher.