One suspects the dinner table conversation about making \u201cFamily Movie\u201d had to go a bit better for Kevin Bacon than for Jack Smith, the B-movie director he plays in this horror movie send-up. But the fear that Bacon has gathered everyone for something indulgent is quickly disabused in the silly and gory comedy where the fun all are having on screen extends to those who aren\u2019t directly related.<\/p>\n
Like the scrappy productions that Jack specializes in, \u201cFamily Movie\u201d is crude in most respects, including its brusque, reckless editing to match its many brutal kills. But it\u2019s sophisticated where it counts when it quickly moves away from easy jokes about being on the low-budget set to harder truths about being in a showbiz family that have to be confronted as a real killer runs loose on the farm. It\u2019s instantly ingratiating to see Helen, (Kyra Sedgwick) and her daughter Ula (Sosie Bacon), serving up sandwiches to the crew after wrapping a scene they\u2019ve just shot as actors in patriarch Jack\u2019s latest opus \u201cBlood Moon,\u201d though even with everyone pitching in, it is hardly a happy set. Jack is nagged by Maya (Liza Koshy), a BTS videographer that he\u2019d love to get rid of if her father wasn\u2019t financing part of the production, and also his musician son Trent (Travis Bacon), who aspires to operate the camera just once even though he hasn\u2019t entirely decided on a professional path forward. Ula also has career problems, but the good kind, when her manager Catherine (Andrea Savage) pushes past the patchy cell service deep in the heart of Texas to inform her that she\u2019s landed the lead in a TV series, though taking the role will mean bailing on her parents before the shoot ends.<\/p>\n
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When Jack faces mounting debt as a producer and is losing light by the passing second as a director, he can\u2019t be really bothered to care when he discovers that Helen has killed their neighbor Bill (John Carroll Lynch). Not only was the neighbor\u2019s noisy canine ruining takes, Bill was being a bit of a dog himself, asking for sexual favors. But it does become the driving force of the comedy when a local sheriff (Scoot McNairy) comes poking around and the family starts to learn Bill\u2019s murder might not have been an isolated incident. While playing the most overlooked member of the family, Sedgwick has the juiciest role as a happy housewife who gleefully slices through more than just bread for craft services.<\/p>\n
While little is taken seriously by the filmmakers, Dan Beers\u2019 script does just enough dramatic legwork to get at the heart of the family\u2019s issues. Helen is said to have sacrificed a promising acting career to star in her husband\u2019s films and raise their kids, adding an interesting wrinkle to Ula\u2019s dilemma about breaking the news of her next gig to her parents. Travis also wishes he could speak more easily to his dad, and while the character is the least developed of the lot, Trent Bacon looks the most at home stalking around the set of of an indie shoot, with his long hair and general indifference to what\u2019s being filmed. He makes his presence felt in the film\u2019s heavy metal soundtrack that he contributes to with his band Contracult.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not every slasher film that ends with the filmmakers\u2019 personal home movies from school plays and concerts accompanying the credits, but knowing it\u2019s corn syrup that makes all the fake blood spilled so thick, the sweetness doesn\u2019t seem entirely off the mark. The spirit of the endeavor can forgive a lot, with some clumsy filmmaking that doesn\u2019t seem to be an intentional homage, such as a slapdash set-up to Helen\u2019s murderous ways and a slightly tacked-on feeling opening involving a film critic who has been a thorn in Jack\u2019s side. Not everyone will appreciate a dance number chaotically spliced into a gruesome sequence set around a woodchipper, yet it plays like gangbusters for the right crowd, feeling as if the film hasn\u2019t just brought a family together on screen, but one off of it as well \u2014 in laughter.<\/p>\n
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