Ryan Nicholson

(In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) I really didn’t like Gutterballs, but it’s far from the worst horror film I’ve ever seen for one reason: In its quest to re-create the trashy slasher movies of the early 1980s, it spares no dirty tricks and fully commits to its trashiness. Still, don’t expect much: Announcing its colours early on, the first act of Gutterballs features an excruciating gang-rape sequence that’s meant to justify all of the following killings. To say that it feels exploitative is underselling it — the graphic nature of the five-minute-long scene (both in violence and nudity) is grotesque, and clearly underscores writer-director Ryan Nicholson’s intention to make a film for the basest class of horror fans. But since Gutterballs is a rape-revenge slasher film, well, it’s not as if this is atonal: Far gorier bloodshed and nudity follow for the entire film’s duration. Some cleverness points go to making every kill bowling-related (whether it’s bowling balls, pins, shoes, or waxing machine — and you can tell how proud the filmmakers felt about that last one by the amount of time spent showing it), although those cleverness points are immediately taken back by a script that decides that there’s so little difference between right and wrong that it liquidates the entire cast, no matter their involvement in the initial outrage. So much for morality — but then again, the only moral choice is not to see the film. Not that you’d be missing much in terms of technique: below average directing, awful acting, terrible image quality, garish colours, grimy atmosphere and ugly cinematography are only some of the lowlights here, and that’s before getting into the repellence of an old-school slasher not aiming any higher than thrilling the gore-hounds. There’s an obvious pun here about Gutterballs and minds in gutters, but I have a feeling that’s not the slam I would intend it to be.