I was looking forward to going back to Tromaville.
While I feel something was lost in the shift from shooting on film to digital, I will always a place in my heart for the trashy madness of Troma Entertainment. They can be gross, aggressive, insane, but there’s always an element of fun. I know I’ll see something in a Troma movie that I can’t find anywhere else. Throughout their wild output, The Slashening 2: The Final Beginning fits alongside their classics as a fun horror-comedy.
Taking place five years after the first Slashening film, The Slashening 2 follows Madison (Addie Weycrich) as she joins a trauma therapy group after the death of her father. However, one by one, they get killed off by the mysterious Sack Face. Along the way, writer/director Brandon Bassham satirizes performative wokeness, gentrification, and virtue signaling through his characters.
The film’s satire and humor are its strengths. Bassham isn’t subtle, but he doesn’t have to be because his comedy is biting, natural, and honestly really funny. The jokes are primarily character-driven, which prevents them from being dated due to the timely subject matter. The jokes maintains the theme of fakeness and hypocrisy, so the humor feels consistent to the overarching ideas Bassham targets. The humor is dark while always punching upward, keeping the humor from being meanspirited like complaining about sensitivity or people being too offended. At times, Bassham gets so focused on the jokes that he loses the plot, resulting in some pacing problems, some dead zones, and a lack of focus. However, the jokes are consistently funny and tonally sound, so it didn’t take me out of the experience. I could’ve used more gore effects as while it is a horror-comedy, it leans more into the comedy than horror, but I still had a lot of fun with the comedy.
The cast overall gave fun performances, nailing the comic timing while also playing off each other well. A few of the actors devolved into caricature, but most of them were naturally funny. Addie Weyrich gives a solid performance as Madison, subtly funny without dropping character. Patrick Foley, Madonna Refugia, and Colin O’Brien were also great standouts, funny and comfortable in their roles.
The Slashening 2 is fun, thanks to its humor and cast. You get the impression everyone had fun making it, and it’s easy to get caught up in its vibe. The film probably could’ve benefited from a tighter script, but I’m not going to complain that a comedy has too many funny jokes in it.
The Slashening 2: The Final Beginning will be having its New York premiere at the Film Noir Cinema on July 9th, followed by a double feature with the first Slashening film on July 10th.
