Headless is a film from 2015 although it was made to look like it’s from 1978. There’s even a trailer before it to make the grindhouse-esque feeling stronger. It’s an interesting take on the horror genre, to make something look older and more vintage than it really is. And, the trailer is good fun too! It wasn’t necessary but it still added something to the premise. The reason I sought it out and watched it was because it was also on the same list on “more disturbing films than A Serbian Film” just like Trauma from 2017.
Did it live up to my expectations? Well… no! To even compare this with A Serbian film is to compare oranges with water balloons, it’s not even remotely the same thing. It really didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to figure that out.
But is it disturbing? Well, yes and no I guess. If you haven’t seen thousands and thousands of movies like I have you might find it getting under your skin. If the most horrifying films you have seen are the Saw Franchise and the usual vanilla horror like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street you will find some unusual elements. There are certainly things that are not normal in a context like that.
The movie is basically about his masked killer in a skull mask murdering women. That in itself is nothing unusual, most slashers have that as a premise. Maybe not exactly the skull, but at least a masked killer murdering women (or any one who crosses their path). What makes this different is the grindhouse tone of it. It really looks like it was made in the seventies, the dialog is so over the top sometimes that it’s really funny.
But at the same time, the dialogue is at times really well written and witty. Unfortunately it’s also very uneven. It can be brilliant and in the next moment you wonder if the writers have borrowed some pot from the characters in the movie before starting their writing process. Same thing with the special effects really. Something it’s really good, looks practical enough and really makes it bloody. Something is so obviously drake that it’s not even funny. Come to think of it, maybe that’s a way to make it more naturally seventies? I didn’t think about that before.
But how does this differ from the vanilla slasher then? Well, it is bloodier. Sometimes they just don’t shy away from using more than they would need. There’s also the violence that is way more over the top than in the milder examples of slashers mentioned before. The killer has a fetish for chopping off their heads, apart from killing, maiming and torturing. And he does “things” with the heads. Let’s just say that Headless give “deep throat” a whole new meaning. So it’s most definitely sexually perverted.
As it goes along, we get to see glimpses of what made this masked killer the way he is today. And It’s a dark story, not that it should be used as an excuse for his killing spree, but there is certainly an explanation to why he became that way. Some things that weren’t obvious from the start gets explained like the little kid, also in a skull mask that accompanies him. Is it a supernatural being? His son? Himself? I think you will find your own conclusion about that, but I certainly changed my mind during the passing of the movie.
By the end of Headless I also started thinking about whether this can be said to be based on the life of Ed Gein. Many movies claimed they have used his case as some inspiration and most of the time they have taken a very small portion of what really happened into the story. I guess the most famous examples are Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But this must have been at least as inspired by Ed Gein as Three on a Meathook.
At the end of the day I thought it became too dull at the end. A saving grace is that it doesn’t end in a way that makes someone living happily ever after, it’s just as dark as the story while the movie is rolling. But there’s not enough to keep the interest for the 85 minutes either.
