Killer Piñata (2015)

It's the last week of 2022's Spooky Season and it's been... a bit of a mixed bag. The Open House was mostly unremarkable, Z-O-M-B-I-E-S was decent but a bit formulaic, and Slumber was a frustrating spunking of potential. But Spooky Season just wouldn't be complete if I didn't cover some completely over-the-top intentionally silly nonsense. In 2020 it was Killer Sofa, last year Bad Hair, and this year: Killer Piñata! "A possessed piñata, seeking to avenge the savagery that humanity has inflicted on his kind, picks off a group of friends, one by one, in an unending night of terror!" And after reading "this movie was shot in 8 days." I am genuinely excited about watching this.

In desperate need of a piñata or 3 for his sons, birthday party, David Goodman (Steven James Price) convinces his local... party supplies?... store to sell him a rainbow coloured donkey piñata, clearly marked with "do not cell." - poor spelling intentional, along with a pink donkey and blue.. Captain America shaped one? I don't know? After said rainbow donkey witnesses the horrific murder and mutilation of it's pink brethren it... well does nothing because it's a piñata. But something doesn't feel right... meanwhile back at the party store, when the shopkeeper (Joette Waters) discovers her lazy sales assistant has sold the piñata clearly marked with "do not cell." she is both outraged and terrified demanding her assistant find the receipt as "there may still be time to save them."... meanwhile Lindsey Goodman (Eliza-Jane Morris) promises to watch her parents place whilst they take brother Luke away for his birthday, and immediately has some friends over, inviting her pal Rosetta (Lindsay Ashcroft) who has to drag her cousin Martin (Daniel Hawkes) with her, but also invites Lindsey's on off boyfriend Scott (Billy Chengary) and his pal Chad (no really) (Nate Bryan) with the ultimate aim being that they both pair off and get laid. Obviously. As things get immediately awkward, and the boys ask about the party, and Chad ends up bashing the Captain America piñata to bits, rainbow donkey decides that enough is enough. And he comes to life and begins to chew himself free of the string hanging him from the garage roof... After the 4 others leave Martin alone in the house, in hopes that he might take a hint and bail, after he gets spooked by noises outside, Martin wanders out where he is attacked, tied to a tree and beaten to death by the rainbow donkey which has now become: the killer piñata! Returning back to the house, the 4 begin to get some beers on the go and Rosetta goes outside to see if Martin has finally bailed on them, not noticing his bloody carcass stashed away in a dustbin in the garage. But she does notice a rainbow coloured donkey piñata on the garage floor and proceeds to carry the killer piñata back into the house...  As the couples pair off with things still weird between Lindsey and Scott and things borderline mega cringe between Rosetta and Chad... the respective couples retreat to respective bedrooms. Sensing an opportunity, the piñata sneaks into the room whilst Rosetta and Chad are banging and proceeds to get between them before attacking. Pinning Chad to ground and shitting candy in his mouth until he pukes himself to death. Yes really. Possessing Chad, he then proceeds to go after Rosetta, who, struggling to get away on a floor caked in puke, ends up getting choked to death by a pair of nipple clamps wrapped around her neck... the commotion does catch the attention of a now heavily stoned Lindsey but a still possessed Chad manages to convince all his fine and she returns back to her room, before the piñata releases it's grasp on him and checks that both it's victims are completely dead. Meanwhile back at the party supplies store, the shopkeeper has tracked down the Goodman's address and pledges to sacrifice herself if necessary to destroy "the evil." Back at the house, when Lindsey catches Scott trying to knock out a crafty one whilst she's asleep, she goes bananas and chucks him out, but as they argue and just as he is about to leave, the power goes out. Making their way to basement and restoring power they return and discover Rosetta's dead body posed against the door frame. Immediately flying into a panic, the pair dash for the back door but discover the shopkeeper standing in the doorway, hook in hand, terrifying them both. After doing nothing really to calm the situation, the shopkeeper begins to explain the origin story of the killer piñata, explaining that he was once a man who worked in a piñata factory who was victim of an accident borne out of a cruel prank that resulted in him falling into an industrial shredder and possessing a piñata to seek his revenge. Before she can explain how to banish the ghost to the afterlife, she is impaled from behind with the beating stick and collapses to the floor before the piñata dives at Lindsey and begins to gnaw at her arm. After Scott manages to free it from Lindsey, the pair hide in the basement and Scott begins to get hysterical claiming they'll need to hide the bodies because nobody is going to believe them that it was a "killer fucking piñata." and as Lindsey calms him down and talks him round, they decide they have to make weapons in order to kill it. Que an incredibly over the top montage. After manufacturing shotguns and crossbows from common household items... the pair split up to search the house but reconvene in the living room where, when Scott momentarily sets down his crossbow, the piñata jams one of the arrows through Lindsey's leg and dives at Scott. Throwing it off Scott helps Lindsey to the kitchen and turning around to face the piñata it... chews a hole in his jeans and starts sucking his dick... It was a reference earlier in the movie I... can't be bothered to explain... but this results in Scott getting his bellend chomped off where he bleeds out and collapses dead to the floor. Lindsey, managing to wrench the arrow from her leg is then attacked by the piñata again but rips one of it's legs off and throws it across the room where it retreats, injured, to the basement. Grabbing a hammer from the kitchen drawer... as you do... Lindsey hobbles after it into the basement, following the trail of sweets, and after a fight in the basement that results in Lindsey getting her ear chewed off, she overpowers the piñata and tears it to pieces, feasting on it's chocolate heart inside. In the closing scenes, The Goodman's and Luke return to discover the mess and are very disappointed that their daughter held a party whilst they were gone... whilst in the basement the piñata begins to reassemble itself as Luke pops one of the sweets into his mouth...

I think, ironically, in comparison with the 2 other serious horror movies I watched this month (Z.O.M.B.I.E.S doesn't count) this one genuinely ended up being the most graphic. I was curious why it was an 18+ going in, but aside from the gratuitous sexual references, they also didn't dial back on the violence here...! And even though it was intentionally over the top, and for the most part, just fake enough looking that it wasn't too horrifying... it was still pretty graphic! Although, that combined with some genuinely decent cinematography and soundtracking, is about all the movie has going for it really. This... this just isn't very good.

And I don't wanna be a dickhead about it, because it was so painfully obvious that it was supposed to be a bad movie. I get that. But aside from Eliza-Jane Morris, the rest of the acting was fucking abysmal. I swear most of the people in this had probably never done a movie before. Even Joette Waters who has an IMDB page and has been in like *checks* 145 movies came across as a total amateur in this. It peaked at average across the board and got worse from there really. But I dunno, maybe it was supposed to be intentional? Maybe they were supposed to be parodying slasher flicks by being so transparently terrible? 

That aside, the whole premise was so ridiculous; a killer piñata that I am genuinely fine with that. It was stupid. The movie treated it as stupid and I was fine with that. But to their credit, they turned it into an actual, mostly fresh, slasher movie. I felt like there was a good degree of creative plagiarism going on, I haven't watched Childs Play but I get the feeling it borrows alot from it, but the concept was so idiotic and they absolutely played up to it. So to a degree it was amusing owing to that. And amusing to see a childs piñata genuinely tearing away at the flesh of a human person. But after the first couple of times it sort of started to grow a bit thin. And beyond that there was nothing else really that was helping to get this movie over.

There was some pretty impressive cinematography though, and it was obvious it was shot on the cheap. I wouldn't be surprised to learn this was shot with DSLR's or something and not a "proper" movie camera, but that was absolutely fine actually, and although a good half of the shots were slightly out of focus most of the time... I was willing to let that pass and chalk it up to the indie production values. It didn't ruin it for me any to be fair, and there was honestly some great usage of interesting and creative camera angles. Similarly the soundtrack, although entirely originally produced (I think, save for some rock music numbers?) was also really decent. It was competent enough that despite the fact our movies characters were getting gnawed to pieces by a papier mâché toy the music was still deadly serious and dramatic.

Unfortunately though, there isn't really a lot else more for me to say. I don't feel like the same amount of creativity and intelligence was soaked into this as there was into, say, Killer Sofa, which was a similarly ridiculous premise but at least did enough to have me come away from it thinking; 'wow that was genuinely a decent movie?!' whereas here it felt like an amusing joke got massively out of hand. And unfortunately once the novelty of a murderous piñata had worn off there wasn't alot else really that kept the movie going and the graphic violence, blood and gore wasn't really enough to be impressive on it's own. I think if you were about 4 beers deep and you watched this with a gang of friends it might be good for a laugh, but that was about all it was good for. 1 out of 5.