Horror Movie Review: Slayed (2020)

Stop me if you’ve heard this before… A killer dressed in a Santa Claus suit returns to the scene of his previous massacre to dish out even more blood and mayhem. This is Slayed and it’s an awful holiday horror movie.

Directed by Mike Capozzi and Jim Klock, both of who star in the film, with the latter also writing the story, Slayed is as basic as they come. A slasher horror with little actual on-screen horror, a yawn-inducing story, a set of wholly unlikable characters and set in one of the blandest locations possible.

Where does the majority of Slayed take place? In a water treatment plant. I shit you not.

The movie opens showing a load of bound, gagged and bloody women. These are the victims of the Harris Country Killer who killed them while dressed as Santa Claus. This all happened at the Harris County water treatment plant and the killer was never found.

Five years later, on the anniversary of the massacre, the killer is back and looking to carry on the festive frivolities. For a handful of workers at the plant, it’s going to be a night to remember. Although one character, an original survivor, has been waiting for this moment for the past five years.

At 74 minutes long, Slayed feels 60 minutes too long. What we have here is nothing but a bog-standard slasher short dragged out to excruciating lengths. Lengths dominated by bland, unlikable and boring characters doing very little. A huge portion of the movie is nothing but characters running around, screaming and then running some more. What should be fast, frantic and furiously bloody, is actually the opposite.

Yet Slayed thinks its doing so much more. Hence its ‘twist’ when it comes around. A killer reveal and a twist that most can see coming a mile away. Which would be fine if it was good but it’s not. It’s not good at all.

It’s fair to say that there was effort put in but the talent just isn’t there to make that effort meaningful. It does at least feel somewhat festive, even if the awful location threatens to derail that.