Title: The Bunnyman Massacre (2014)
Director: Carl Lindbergh
Runtime: 104 minutes
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I was stoked when I found out that I was going to review a film about a killer in a bunny costume. This sounded absurd, and I do love the absurd, but I was worried because I never saw the first film. Thankfully, I can say that you can easily follow The Bunnyman Massacre without watching the original, Bunnyman (2011).
The Bunnyman Massacre opens with a school bus picking a girl up who’s waiting at the bus stop. Her dead body falls over, and a man in a giant bunny costume shows up with a chainsaw and shotgun. He blasts the driver, climbs into the bus and starts to slaughter the kids as they try and get out of the emergency exit door. Welcome to The Bunnyman Massacre. With that kind of setup, one can only expect some more morbid shit to follow.
Sadly, after the film’s giant opening bloodbath, which doesn’t stop at the school bus, instead continuing into levels of awesome unseen in most low budget horror films, it pulls a torture porn twist on us, which is really hit or miss. It starts with two girls being caught by the Bunnyman and his partner in crime. The one begs for them not to kill them and offers them four other people they saw earlier. This is where things go a little haywire, and she just barges into this camp where three girls and one guy is camping. She demands they go with her, and after a bit of “are you insane”, the campers end up getting caught up in the whole thing.
There are a few minor sub-plots, but the film is really about the Bunnyman and Joe (played by David Scott), who has the creepy redneck thing down perfectly. Joe runs a little gas station in the middle of nowhere, and they sell beef jerky made from their victims’ remains. The cast as a whole does a fairly decent job of running around, screaming, and dying. There’s a small, supposedly dead child in the opening who is terrible at playing dead. She breathes rather blatantly, but that set me up to expect a B-movie, which is what the film is clearly striving for. The body count is also way up there, and there are a few crazy kills.
Carl Lindbergh wrote and directed the film. He pays great homage to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre as he uses the flashbulb sound effect, which always makes me think of TCM. Despite the low budget, the gore is pretty solid, and it’s mostly practical effects (except for the CGI blood splatter on the camera, which does look a bit silly). He takes a lot of time setting up the events for the girls to die, and he best pays homage to the sleeping bag scene in Friday the 13th. The worst kill is a girl being locked inside a barrel and pushed down a hill, which still doesn’t exactly make sense. My favorite scene is when the Bunnyman removes the head of his suit, and some fantastic make-up effects managed to gross me out.
I actually watched The Bunnyman Massacre twice. The first time I must have been in shock because I really enjoyed the experience and felt it moved along nicely. Upon the second viewing, I couldn’t help but feel like the film dragged on for a bit too long. It’s around an hour and fourty-five minutes in length, which for this type of film, is longer than usual. There’s a planned third film to end the trilogy, and I’m really curious to hunt down a copy of the original to see what lead to these events. If this film sounds like your cup of tea, then by all means, check it out. It’s flawed, but so are most horror films, and with its small budget, I have to say that I’m impressed with what they are able to do with The Bunnyman Massacre.
The Bunnyman Massacre (2014) was released on DVD by Midnight Releasing on August 12th, 2014. It was written and directed by Carl Lindbergh. The film is 104 minutes in length, and is not rated. Cinefessions was provided a digital copy of the film for review from Midnight Releasing.
Chris was raised on horror films, which gave him a deep love for the genre, especially its most quirky and offbeat titles (like A Nightmare on Elm Street 2). This love quickly turned into an obsession for cinema in 1997, when he decided he needed to see every major theatrical release. Video games (JRPGs), reading (anything but fantasy), and reality television (Survivor) are just some of his other passions. He’s been with Cinefessions since 2013, and has been writing reviews all over the internet for the past twelve years.
