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Director: Jeremy Rudd
Writer: Jeremy Rudd
Stars: Christine Rose Allen, Marie Bergenholtz, Jason Brooks
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a crazed serial killer escapes from an insane asylum and goes on a killing spree. Seriously, please feel free to stop me. If this all-too-familiar trope is what tickles your fancy, then Die’ced: Reloaded should probably make it to your playlist.
We kick the film off with Benjamin meeting with his psychiatrist while imprisoned in a mental health facility. The hospital at least gives off the appearance of a real hospital, as opposed to the standard grimy asylum, wrought with screams and improperly tended-to tenants that we see in other movies of this kind of ilk. Lo and behold, as the meeting progresses Benjamin eventually becomes agitated and kills his psychiatrist in rather creative fashion (he uses crayons) and then a nurse. It’s gruesome, but this begins a trend of overkill that dominates the rest of the movie. The scene isn’t bad, but it overstates its point.
After a rather non-eventful nurse-assisted escape, Benjamin makes his way to the home of a Halloween reveler prepping to head to a party. While slowly dispatching this character from the movie, our killer treats himself not only to the victim’s Halloween costume but jams out to what was on his headphones. It’s comical and gives Ben some depth, setting him slightly aside from your typical serial killer asylum escapee, but again it just takes a bit too long.
Alright, cut to suburbia. We’re introduced to Cassandra (Eden Campbell). She’s a jogger. And man can she jog. She jogs so good and for so long that you know she was varsity on the Final Girl University cross country team. After this short (get on with it) fitness break, we meet the rest of her family and go through the usual motions of developing (maybe overdeveloping) characters who won’t make it to the end of the film.
What follows is roughly an hour of creatively gory, albeit drawn out, murderous insanity. While the scenes contain explicit content, they also appear somewhat derivative. If Art the Clown had a younger cousin, it would most likely be Benjamin the Scarecrow. Thankfully, different camera techniques set the two apart in that regard.
Overall, the character banter is alright, and somewhat comedic at times. Aside from that it’s a slow burn to the end that felt more like an episode of “Tales From The Crypt” that had been stretched from its usual 30 minute format to almost three times its length for the same story. If you like slashers that at least make an attempt at being hip and edgy, check Benny out in Die’ced: Reloaded.
Rating: 5.5/10