Attack of the Killer Donuts (2016)

(In French, On Cable TV, November 2019) Don’t get your hopes up for Attack of the Killer Donuts: This is one of those cheap low-budget movies where the title makes up roughly fifty percent of the film’s enjoyment and almost all of its later disappointment. A premise-in-a-title, it does effectively announce a horror comedy in which people are slaughtered by donuts. The mechanics (killer serum dropped in a vat of oil, bla-bla-bla) are irrelevant—the point here is the succession of implausible scenes in which homicidal donuts kill much of the ensemble cast. Our plucky teenage protagonist and his soon-to-be girlfriend are in the middle of the action, but viewers’ attention will be glued to the special effects and low-budget craziness more than any meaningful characterization. It … works. Barely. If your expectations are low, that is—with its tiny budget and trashy execution, director Scott Wheeler can’t make Attack of the Killer Donuts become more than a ridiculous horror comedy earning a chunk of laughs at its own expense. In that Friday-night-at-the-grindhouse spirit, the film meets expectations. But don’t think you’re going to see an unheralded cult classic here: it’s what it presents itself to be and nothing more. At least the protagonists aren’t detestable, and the result isn’t reprehensible. The same film with a duller title would be noticeably less enjoyable.