Meathook Massacre 4 (2018) User Reviews

Far better than expected indie slasher sequel

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 7/10 · 28 March 2020]

Deciding to go to Vegas, a group of friends celebrating a birthday head out into the desert to have fun only to stop off at a roadside building looking for help after a hit-and-run accident, but when the directions lead them into a crazed cannibal killer and his psychotic family they're forced to fight them off before becoming food.

Overall, this was a pretty solid effort in the series. The film's best aspects absolutely revolve around the various energetic confrontations that arise here, featuring a slew of enjoyable indie-flavored stalking scenes that go more for the typical quantity of encounters rather than suspenseful stalking. From the opening escape through the woods escaping the meathook-wielding killer to the encounter in the back of the store looking for help and the scenes of the group confronting the family at the store when they go to check on him. These are quite well handled and offer up a great mix of high-energy chasing or brawling once they find out the killer is involved in hunting them down, which is made all the more enjoyable with the continuous scenes of human butchery and carnage on display with the family members shown carving up bodies, harvesting innards and slicing up the remaining parts of the bodies which sets the stage for the psychotic dinner sequence that tries to offer something new to the setup. As well, when the film isn't focused on the various encounters with the killer, it's quite enjoyable. The central group of friends are shown to be incredibly sympathetic, coming off like a legitimate group that likes hanging out together with gentle ribbing on each other and playful teasing that would be at home with a group of friends who hung out pretty often. The kids end up following the more established genre tropes expected here once they encounter the hit-and-run accident and run into the psychotic family out in the desert where everything comes together, really giving this one a lot to like overall. There isn't a whole lot to dislike here. The main issue to hold this one back is the wholly underwhelming and generally quick finale, which seems to be incredibly grand in build up which is let down in the execution. Once she's been captured and is taken prisoner, the entire time is spent on looking for a big confrontation between her or one of the family members, yet that never comes. The manner of interrupting the dinner and getting it started looks to play it off, but having the killers sequestered and unable to do anything results in a somewhat lackluster final fight and brawl that seems to end rather quickly and then just ends, leaving a somewhat dissatisfying feel. As well, the typical low-budget indie feels here does stand out at times, from the general atmosphere and feel as well as some of the special effects work on display that some might have an issue with due to some oversight and obvious technical areas that give this type of production away. That is more of individual preference, though, and not indicative of the film as a whole, though.

Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Nudity.

Inconsistent and terrible in just about every aspect

[Altered_Bourbon · 1/10 · 1 July 2019]

Oh my, where to start.

First off, this film BARELY constitutes being called a feature film. It's very apparent that the ONLY reason that the multitude of drawn out, single angle, useless dialogue scenes were left in the final cut was because it was needed in order to get over the "feature length" time mark.

Within the first 30-40 minutes of the film, we have only 3 scenes. 1: cold open, (and ironically the only cold graded scene in the entire film, the rest of it is some ridiculous pink hue, which I'll get back to) 2: what feels like 20 Minutes alone of a woman rambling in the middle of a road, hit by a car, and then rambling while dying for 5 more minutes And then 3: a group of friends sitting around talking for another 10 minutes where literally the only information worth while the audience receives is that one of them is vegan (never comes up again) one of them has never been to vegas (never comes up again) and one of them "used" to hunt (never comes up again). If the dialogue was clever or even marginally entertaining I could let this go, but it isn't, so I won't. Which leads me to:

Dialogue/writing: One of the most boring and worst written films I've ever seen. I was half expecting it to be revealed to be a cheesy meta narrative halfway through, and BOY was I wrong. This film takes itself Totally seriously and that makes it terrible to proportions only reached by the likes of The Room. But at least The Room was laughably bad. This is just bad. Characters are introduced and gone for no reason, random happenings with no context or explanation (from stuff being cut, obviously) and a convoluted plot that can't be followed even though 90% of it is spoon fed to the audience from one character introduced in the last 15 minutes of the film.

Acting: ALMOST as bad as the dialogue. The only actors worth a damn in this thing were Drew Marvick, Mindy Gilkerson, and Mark justice. At least those actors took a god awful script and had fun with it without taking it too seriously. The rest ranged from "meh" to "please stop" not Much to say here other than that because you can only act to a certain degree when you have a terrible script.

Cinematography/coloring One shot in this entire film was pretty. ONE. The rest were either totally over exposed, color graded to make the Nevada desert PINK, and long takes from one angle with nothing happening but talking. Imagine a scene where a character exits a car and walks to a bar. Sounds fine right? Ok now imagine that scene except 3 MINUTES LONG WITH 5 CUTS. If you're gonna make that scene THAT long and show an entire walk, at LEAST do it with a super wide shot that shows the expanse of the desert and helps the audience feel the character is small, insignificant, and nervous. Then you have the fact that there are only 4 shots in this film with literally any depth. For how overexposed this film is you'd think that they would've at least kept the Aperture wide open to get some nice DOF shots but NOPE Totally flat images. The film is disgusting and jarring to look at and ignores just about every single basic film making rule. This is elementary crap people, get on it and get a better DOP.

Editing: UGH. I can't fault the editor too much because it's clear that the morons behind the cameras didn't have a hot damn what they were doing, but jumping between gradings like a hot potato makes you seem daft and just as guilty. Deserts aren't pink, and if they're gonna be pink then 1: don't show a beautiful orange B-Roll shot before hand (which was obviously from a B-Roll site or something, def not done by this crew) and 2: KEEP IT CONSISTENT If your desert shots are going from pink to brown to pink again within 5 minutes there's a freaking problem!

Sound: I don't know why there was even a sound crew Credited. The sound was terrible. An amazon mic and a little 60 dollar zoom gets better audio quality than this. In one shot, the audio is straight up out of sync with one of the actors voices. Another editing problem, either way no excuse.

And finally, the film called "meathook massacre" has TWO deaths caused by a meathook. Unacceptable #falseadvertising

P.S: foam pieces in a bucket painted red don't look like human meat. Wtf are you doing, come on.

A satisfying entry in a less-than-satisfying franchise

[gojiseb · 10/10 · 7 February 2020]

Despite the lackluster quality of the first couple entries in this series (and a rather middling third one), John Ward's entry into the Meathook Massacre series delivers as well as you can hope from a micro-budget slasher film. Pacing issues aside, the good outweighs the bad and it all leads into a truly entertaining final act that's highlighted by a wonderful performance by the always great Brinke Stevens.

It's not a masterpiece, but it delivers in ways the others simply couldn't and the results are every bit as fun as you could hope from a movie with a title like this. Ward is a more than capable director who has shown he can deliver the goods with limited resources and I personally look forward to whatever he does next!

Ambitious effort from a talented crew with ZERO budget

[stepperman73 · 10/10 · 7 February 2020]

Yes, it's true that I had a bit part in this film, so you may think I'm being biased here. But the reason I wanted to be involved with it was because of the passion and dedication shown by the filmmakers of each of these installments. Being an indie filmmaker myself, I can understand and appreciate the barriers and limitations that these guys had to overcome in order to get their vision realized. Is the film perfect? No. Is it a bit rough around the edges? Of course. Is it Oscar-worthy? Absolutely not. And that's half the fun of it. This unlikely little franchise is truly one of the more impressive micro-micro-micro budget horror franchises that has managed to last an astounding FIVE movies - and actually be pretty entertaining in the process- and for that, it's a "10" in my book. Enjoy.

Real Bloodbath

[arck-86783 · 10/10 · 7 February 2020]

If you enjoy Texas Chainsaw your get the see The Best of what a Massacre should Look like from the mind and creator of Axemas John Ward will bring you the Fear of Bubba ;)

Bubba returns with a vengeance in the most exciting chapter of the long-running franchise!

[ianmair91 · 8/10 · 17 October 2020]

"Meathook Massacre 4" ranks as one of my favorites in the series of slasher films centered around Bubba, the stark-raving mad butcher! John Ward came into the fold with this film and brings a unique visual and storytelling style to the proceedings. The plot centers around a group of four travelers who accidentally run over Bubba's mother on the highway in the middle of a desert. They believe they have gotten away with it, but Bubba and family are not far behind and have no intentions of letting the assailants live!

What I like most about this particular film in the franchise is that it gives you a character to really root for, that being Kim played by Mindy Gilkerson. She is excellent in her role and brings a great deal of energy and pathos to her character. Brinke Stevens, horror film legend, also makes a superb turn as Auntie Mara, the new head of the family. Any time Brinke is involved, the quality of a film is lifted exponentially! Robert Lankford continues to play Bubba, and I feel this is by far one of his best turns as the character. He seems more animalistic and strong in this film, and the way in which he was photographed really boosted the movie overall. Finally, Dawna Lee Heising makes an appearance in the film, and although brief, was definitely one of the highlights! She is always fun to watch and her cameo in this installment is great!

John Ward brings a keen eye to the visuals in this one, a movie that looks way more expensive than it probably was. Part 4 maintains a certain degree of polish without losing that raw, organic nature of the first three films. There is a great deal of production value here and Ward gets a lot of mileage out of his locations and cast.

Overall, this is one of my favorite installments in the series, next to Parts 6 and 2. I really have enjoyed my journey through this franchise and I hope many more "Meathook Massacre" films are in store for us indie horror fans!