Bitch Ass (Movie Review)

Screened as part of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival

Bitch Ass. Yes, that’s the actual name of the movie. It’s also the name of the would-be future horror icon the movie is attempting to launch, the “first black serial killer to ever don a mask,” as Tony Todd says in the framing segments that bookend the movie - the mask qualifier presumably necessary because Todd is there explicitly to place Bitch Ass in the lineage of other Black horror icons like Blacula, Bones, Candyman, and, um… Tales from the Hood. Why does this movie have a completely out-of-nowhere framing device with Tony Todd as a character apparently named Titus Darq who never appears or is referenced anywhere else in the movie? Why is the movie shot in this inexplicable ultrawide aspect ratio that turns the frame into a horizontal band across even the widest of screens? Buckle up, y’all. This one gets weird and wild.

So I guess we’ll start with Bitch Ass himself. In terms of horror icon fashion, this dude is straight off-the-rack. No cool mask, no signature weapon, just a black suit with a black phantom of the opera mask. Bitch Ass goes costume shopping at CVS, not even Spirit Halloween. He does have a gimmick, though, and it’s admittedly a pretty good one for a bargain basement wannabe slasher franchise. He’s into board games, but not the crazy Eurogames with a million pieces that you invite people over to play once and you all spend two hours trying to figure out the rules and then for some reason nobody will ever come over to play them again. Bitch Ass is into the classic family games everybody grew up playing, but only legally distinct off-brand versions because apparently the Parker Brothers weren’t down for a Bitch Ass collab. So basically, think Saw, but with a giant Connect Four guillotine board.

The movie takes place in 1999 with flashbacks to the early 80s, although both of these are presumably some kind of alternate multiversal pasts because all the fashions, hairstyles, and cars that drive past in the background are contemporary with today. The main 90s influence is that the movie looks and feels like some forgotten VHS artifact you would find at a swap meet right next to a Master P movie. Of course, in the 90s joining a gang was all the rage and the movie kicks off with four youths breaking into the home of Bitch Ass, the local boogeyman urban legend. And well, you know where it goes from there. Board game themed deaths, flashbacks to Bitch Ass’s origin story, a bloody game of Kirkland Signature Battleship, ambiguous ending leaving room for the sequel. We’ve done this before.

So is this movie any good? No, not really. Is it great? Yeah, kind of, but only if you can get down with a trashy and somewhat inept slasher with ambitions that greatly exceed its budget. There are some choices being made in this movie, from the editing that probably necessitates a seizure warning to some almost anime-esque split screen effects that Brian DePalma would probably think is a bit much. Sometimes you can’t make out the dialog because the soundtrack is mixed too loud. Sometimes the set is clearly just painted plywood. Sometimes Tony Todd’s head is out of frame because of the aforementioned (and I can’t stress enough just how inexplicable) ultrawide aspect ratio. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a PowerPoint presentation made by a person who just learned how to animate text. This will probably be a divisive movie that plenty of horror fans will instantly hate, but there’s a more than decent chance that after a few years Bitch Ass will grow a cult following. Let’s hope it’s enough to warrant a sequel with enough of a budget to build a Mouse Trap-inspired murder room.