Horror Movie Review: Alpacalypse (2024)

Not content with having tortured us with the 2015 cult horror movie Llamageddon, one of the creators, Howie Dewin, is back with the alpaca-themed horror movie, Alpacalypse. Which also happens to be a Christmas movie too.

I wasn’t a fan of Llamageddon. I got the joke, I just didn’t think it was funny and was unimpressed by the forced attempt to be given the ‘so bad, it’s good’ tag. For all its absurdities, and there are a lot, it committed the cardinal sin of horror by being boring. Yet, it has resonated with many and has garnered a bit of a cult following, and here we are. With a sequel… kind of.

Embracing its ridiculous concept, Alpacalypse is an improvement on Llamageddon, just about, and that’s mainly because it has got a festive feel and look. Telling a story about a ‘down on their luck’ family who have no choice but to sell their alpacas to a local laboratory, who are willing to pay good money for the animals. The family love their alpacas, particularly a young girl, but with Christmas right around the corner and them unable to even afford to turn on the heating, they have very few options.

The alpacas are brought to the lab, where they will be used humanely to further a potential cure for cancer. At least that’s the idea, but two particular scientists have a different plan. Seeing the alpaca as some sort of God, they synthesis a drug that when administered to an alpaca, turns it into an all destroying, laser eye shooting, murderous beast. The Alpacalypse is coming, and it looks like the only person who can save us now is Santa Claus.

It is as dumb as it sounds, but it’s also dumber as its story is told in incoherent fashion. Not just feeling like a really bad editing job, but with far too much padding. It’s the exact same problem that Llamageddon had. Once you’ve gotten over the amusing sight of a real alpaca chewing away with red CGI eyes that shoot lasers turning humans into exploding bags of blood, there’s very little left.

Rather than build to this nonsense, the film also decides to spend the first five minutes showing off the carnage that the alpacas can create. Once you’ve seen the intro, you’ve seen the best that the film has to offer, and it’s not much.

There’s a fairly game attempt to try and tell a story and base it around several characters. Tying in the festive period and creating a clear pathway to the Alpacalypse. However, once the chaos begins, the story and the character stuff completely disappears into a void of nothingness. The latter half of the film is so forgettable, that hours after watching it, it’s hard to remember anything of note that happened.

Maybe with the right crowd and a certain amount of drink, more fun can be had with Alpacalypse, especially as it does feel suitably festive. However, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s another boring film overall. It’s not about detaching your brain either, as to watch this film it’s a necessity, it’s the simple fact that beyond the short-lived joke of killer alpacas at Christmas, this film doesn’t have anything else to offer.