Since the mid-2000s, Joe Cash has worked in special effects and stuntwork in big-budget films. He was a special effects assistant on the 2010 Wolfman, Underworld: Awakening, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Joe also performed stunts on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, World War Z, and Thor: The Dark World. Unfortunately, Cash was out of work with many major movie studios shutting down due to COVID-19. In the meantime, Joe set up Screaming Screening Productions, a low-budget company devoted to making B-movies. He got some work at Troma Entertainment directing segments for the anthologies Grindsploitation 9 and Grindsploitation 10: Milkin’ It. After filming the documentary Gorenography, Cash decided to make his first feature-length film on a small budget of £500. Despite some technical difficulties requiring them to discard 50% of footage, Carnal Monsters was released in late 2021.
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Rating
Synopsis
At the Tromaville Nuclear Research Center, Dr. Dilf (Ian Sen) consults with nurses Spanks (Alexxa Vice) and Meow (Laura Barker). Suddenly, a series of explosions force them to evacuate, but unfortunately, they die in a fiery car crash. Six months later, a group of five friends is enjoying their time together across the countryside. They play with beach balls, wander through the woods, have a sitdown, and talk about their lives. While walking past the remains of the research center, they find two girls who seem to be unconscious. The group takes them inside to treat their wounds, but the girls start going mad when they wake up. Before long, the group is picked off one-by-one by a group of masked assailants who the nuclear explosions have corrupted. Who will survive the incoming onslaught, and who will be the carnal monsters’ next victim?
Review
Before going any further, I’d like to thank Screaming Screening for sending me a screener copy of Carnal Monsters. They reached out and asked me to review this film for them and be as honest as possible. That said, this is by far one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, and I’m not being hyperbolic. I want to be nice because this was made with no money by people making a silly movie. If all you’re looking for is copious amounts of nudity, crude jokes, and cheap gore, this is for you. While I enjoy these things as much as anyone else, that doesn’t make or break a movie. Here, it feels like these compensate for the film’s lack of a cohesive story and interesting characters. Even if it’s just brainless entertainment, you need a decent narrative to hold everything together.
This thing is a pathetic excuse for a feature film even by Troma standards, and that’s saying a lot. Not only does it have a threadbare plot and no characterization, but it’s also a mess on a technical level. The audio is so bad that I had to turn down the volume whenever the sound would get blown out. Plus, there are several instances where they resort to using shaky-cam, making it even harder to watch. The movie also commits one of the biggest sins in cinema: never reference a better movie during your crappy movie. They use the theme music from Class of Nuke ‘Em High, add stock footage from Citizen Toxie, and even reference Frankenstein. Honestly, I can’t even recommend this as a so-bad-it’s-good movie because I’m sure this was made to be bad. Overall, Carnal Monsters is pure trash and not even fun trash.
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