Tommy Snöberg Söderberg 
Gator Face is a horror movie from 2026. It’s kind of a slasher and kind of a hillbilly flick. There is a masked killer, but there is also a cult, and it takes place in a largely uninhabited area in Florida. Three girls are on vacation, and they really don’t want to go home to everyday life again. They want to stay another day in the sun and on the beach. But they already postponed it one day, and they really have no choice but to be heading for home. What’s really strange is that if they are there for vacation, why is there absolutely no one else there? It seems to me like it ought to be a place where tourists come. But there’s no trace of other people, and they have the beach all to themselves.
Would you really?
When heading for the airport, they pass this house where someone has written something suspicious on the wall. It reads “three dead inside” or something similar. Ok, that’s spooky, and no one saw the text when they were there before, just before going to the beach for the last time. But is it really that spooky that the first thing you think about is to call the police? Do you really want to take a look inside? Would you break in to check thoroughly?
I don’t know if it’s intentional, but Gator Face takes every cliché in the book and hands them to us one at a time. It creates some kind of comedic effect if you’re used to these kind of horror films. The characters don’t react in a natural way; they act like the script tells them, and that’s not how I imagine people would react in the situation that they’re in.’
And it’s a grave situation. What’s inside their house? Well, would you be surprised if there’s a maniac killer there? Masked with something that looks like an alligator mask, armed with an axe. They get attacked, and as I said, there’s every cliché in the book. How they try to escape, what their reactions are, who lives, and who dies. I guess as a non-experienced viewer of horror movies, I think this is highly effective. There are all the things that are designed to make it creepy and scary. But to us, who’ve seen thousands of movies, we see what’s coming every time before it happens.
Comedic effect or hommage?
I don’t really mind it, but it creates comic effects that I would rather have been left out. But, now that I think of it, there is actually one cliché left out. In these Wrong Turn, or The Hills Have Eyes flicks, there’s almost always a gas station, which is not what you think it is, present. There’s none of that here. They talk about one, but there’s actually no one present.
But it’s still an entertaining movie, and the kills are cool. If not anything else, the murders are pretty original even if the lone killer with an axe doesn’t sound too exciting. But when Gator Face (I guess that’s the identity of the masked killer) also uses a pet alligator and even commands the other alligators to attack at his will, it becomes interesting.
I would categorize Gator Face more as something that belongs in the same genre as Wrong Turn and that kind of movie than a slasher, despite having a masked killer in there. And I would also say that even with all the clichés there, I was still not able to figure out the ending. I got some of it right but was way off on a few other things that I won’t spoil for you. All in all, I liked Gator Face, though. It was cool and held a reasonable pace. Some of the acting is totally mind-blowing and brilliant, whilst some of the other actors should have been left on the cutting room floor. I choose to praise the amazing Amariah Dionne in the lead role and not namedrop who I really thought was beyond bad.
About the Author
Del Gibson 