Mutilator 2 (2023) – Buddy Cooper.

'With the return of Big Ed, y'all are gonna end up more than a little dead!'

Like many ardent indie horror fans, I was resolutely hooked by Buddy Cooper's spectacularly grisly, hugely entertaining 80s slasher cult The Mutilator, so, quite naturally, I approached the great man's vastly belated sequel with some pronounced trepidation. Bloody mayhem commences swiftly upon the troubled set of The mutilator reboot, the cartoonishly shouty director being brutally slain, and during the reunion/wrap party, both ex-members of the original feature, and the increasingly terrified cast & crew of the remake are terminally axed from the proceedings, and those survivors fearfully start to believe that, perhaps, Big Ed's vengeful spirit had somehow been rebooted too!

My fears were groundless, while utterly contemporary, with a conspicuously clean video aesthetic, Cooper's energized young cast all do a terrific job, with veteran character actor Terry Kiser clearly having a ball playing the palpably unhinged psycho Thespian Jack Chatham. While the graphic gore is viscerally executed, Cooper's unflinchingly bloody DTV sequel is an intentionally sardonic, deliciously self-aware slasher. Appearing absolutely modern, replete with ubiquitous drone shots, yet rewardingly steeped in the bravura, retrograde ultra-violence of the 80s VHS horror boom. I found the humour, on occasion, to be a tad relentless, the grotesquely libidinous producer is a standout gem, along with, two, or three exquisitely painful-looking, eye-poppingly gruesome kills! Manifestly not in the same league as the original, but a fun, uproariously bloodthirsty, more than credible celebration of Big Ed's slasher god legacy!