‘Overkill’ 2021 Short Film Review

Horror Facts is currently attending the HorrOrigins 2021 film festival and its been an enjoyable experience thus far. I recently had the luxury of seeing the short film Overkill which I feel deserves a review as it was quite good and brought back that 80’s slasher feeling while being modern and created in 2021.

‘OverKill’ is a film with a comedic take on a familiar setup: when too-woke-for-their-own-good college kids are terrorized by an unstoppable masked killer, the final girl must outsmart him to survive. Only in this movie, the killer literally cannot be stopped (or killed). It’s an 80’s slasher movie by way of “Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner” cartoons.

Film Synopsis

The first scene of Overkill reminds you of Wes Craven’s Scream crossed with Friday the 13th as a woman is screaming on the phone while a few friends gather around a campfire. 

It almost feels like camp crystal lake at first, since the short seems deeply influenced by Friday the 13th.

It seems like the film is mixing ‘Friday the 13th’ with ‘Scary Movie’ as one of the characters becomes impaled. He can’t make a fire and his girlfriend is upset because he promises to protect her from the killer, which clearly isn’t going to happen. 

The camera angles are great, and the visual effects are reminiscent of the 1980s and early 1990s, when practical effects were still widely used. I can think of one scene in particular when the actor takes a machete to the head that resembles something you might see Jason Voorhees do. Along with some great background audio to intensify the feeling of impending doom. Although the film is comedic in nature, there are still moments that will have you on the edge of your seat. 

In Overkill, the title comes from the fact that the heroine cannot stop the killer no matter what she does he just seems unstoppable. With guns, arrows, and machetes, nothing can stop him.

There is no computerized animation in the film, just straight up makeup and creative techniques, as with Tom Savini’s classic horror movies. The effects are extremely realistic in the ‘classic horror’ style.

It’s a short, so there’s little story to speak of but I think if it were adapted to a feature-length film that it would be amazing and would create a really great atmosphere. The film was written and directed by Alex Montilla.  In spite of being just a short, it seems that the storyline could be expanded upon to make a full-length comedy\slasher film that everyone could enjoy.

If you get a chance to see this short you should definitely check it out, I had a blast watching it and hope to see a full feature come based on this one.

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Check out HorrOrigins Festival for yourself!