Out of Screamfest, Ashley Cahill’s Once Upon a Time in a Horror Movie serves as a perfect meta companion piece to Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Both operate within similar self-referential genre lines and possess a likeminded filmmaking approach and style. While horror fiends have a plethora of slasher offerings during this slasher renaissance, including Peacock’s Crystal Lake series, this scrappy indie that knows its history and shows a delightful understanding of tone, pacing, and foundational elements deserves equal time in the spotlight. The writer/director delivers a real treat for diehard slasher fans that’s slick but gooey, earnest but playful.
Erika (Mabel Thomas) works at a horror attraction where customers can buy the immersive experience of being in a 1980s slasher film. The secluded countryside property becomes the playground of make-believe blood, guts, and gore that would make Tom Savini proud. Everyone has a part to play, and Erika’s is as camp counselor, as she accompanies a fresh-faced group of 20-somethings. They’re your standard ’80s livestock, shuffled into the “slaughterhouse” for the killing. Cahill involves many references to the classics, such as Scream, John Carpenter’s Halloween (e.g., the escaped mental patient) and Friday the 13th (e.g., the sack-head killer). It’s a handwritten love letter to slashers of the past and pushes the genre ever-forward into the future.
During the immersive experience, a real escaped patient crashes the party with a sack for a mask before trading up with a pig likeness. Things happen that aren’t supposed to happen, leading to confusion, chaos, and paranoia. Bodies hit the floor one after another, and Erika struggles to convince the dwindling group that real bodies are dropping. Cahill masterfully engages with slasher lore while developing his own unique premise with a wicked killer.
He aims to please with Once Upon a Time in a Horror Movie, but he does have plenty of tricks up his sleeve. And he saves them for the best, most unexpected moments. It’s a gleefully gruesome slasher that will scratch that itch for modern-set, vintage-toned slashers that adhere to ol’ trusty cliches and tropes. Sometimes, all you really need is to have fun, and Cahill’s film does not disappoint. Witnessing the characters slowly discover that people are actually getting killed injects what could have been a sleepy, ho-hum slasher with a hearty dose of adrenaline and meta sharpness so precise that the immersive quality oozes from the TV screen.
Once Upon a Time in a Horror Movie doesn’t just come to play; it knocks it out of the park and beyond. Cahill has purposely stacked his cast of characters with the life-blood of most ’80s slashers, a sea of bland faces whose sole reason for existing is to pad the body count. Once Upon a Time firmly understands what kind of film it is and offers up a tasty smorgasbord of setpieces, nail-peeling tension, and mood so thick you’d need a machete to cut through it.
