Horror Movie Review: Heckle (2020)

Some jokes kill.

Heckle sells itself as a psychological/slasher hybrid about a stand-up comedian who runs afoul of a psychotic heckler. A premise that is interesting, yet the film never manages to live up to it. It’s slow, it’s boring and misses the mark on both the psychological horror and slasher aspects.

Directed by Martyn Pick, from a screenplay written by Airell Anthony Hayles, Heckle stars Clark Gable III, Steve Guttenberg and Guy Combes.

The latter plays Joe Johnson, a British comedian (with a bit of Russell Brand about him) who is going through some stuff. He’s gearing up to play the role of the late comedian Ray Kelly (Guttenberg) in a movie but while performing on stage, gets heckled. Joe gives the heckler both barrels, which turns out to be a mistake, as this heckler begins to stalk him.

Paranoia sets in for Joe as he couldn’t see the heckler’s face because of the lights on stage and now he is beginning to suspect everyone around him. He’s right to be worried too as his heckler has a nasty plan for Joe and knows more about him than he would like.

Again, even summing up the movie there, it sounds like a really great watch so it’s with such disappointment that Heckle is just so lacklustre. Its biggest problem is that it never really seems to get out of first gear. Taking an age to get going and lacking any thrills or chills along the way. A lot of time is spent with Joe, not necessarily a bad thing as it’s solid character development, but after a while you start to feel like it’s too much.

Three quarters of the way through the movie and you might start to wonder if anything ‘slashery’ is actually going to happen and then, boom, it starts abruptly and ends just as abruptly. A bunch of quick, sudden and forced deaths leading to a killer reveal that has the movie descend into nonsense.

Heckle would have been better served by being far simpler. Sticking to the straight-forward idea of a crazed heckler targeting a stand-up comedian, killing his friends along the way, until no-one but Joe remains. Instead, we got this and it’s just not good.