Murdaritaville

Of course I never heard about this 2024 movie titled "Murdaritaville" prior to sitting down to watch it. And why would I have? Any way, I opted to sit down and watch this movie, as I had never heard about it, much less actually seen it. With no idea what I was in for here, then writers Paul Dale and Dylan McGovern had every opportunity to impress and entertain me.

The storyline in the movie was bland. Sure, it wasn't among the worst of movies I have sat through, but the storyline and script here just didn't have much of anything interesting to offer. And that made for a rather bland viewing experience. It was actually a mundane viewing experience, and I found it somewhat of a struggle to sit through, as it never caught on with my liking.

Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with a single actor or actress on the cast list. The acting performances were exactly as you would imagine from a movie of this type and caliber. Just don't get your hopes up too high, and you will be find. The acting performances weren't among the worst I've seen, so that counted for something.

I guess I don't have to say that I couldn't endure watching this entire movie. In fact, I ended up giving up on it 26 minutes into its 63 minute runtime. Yeah, by then I had just lost all interest in the characters and the storyline. And this is not a movie that I will return to attempt finish watching.

My rating of "Murdaritaville", from director Paul Dale, lands on a very generous two out of ten stars.

What else can I say...if you like Jimmy Buffett and bad movies, this one is for you. Murdaritaville was my attempt to combo my two favorite things, the musical stylings of Buffett and my love of bad horror comedy movies. Maybe it works for you, maybe it doesn't. I think if you go into this expecting something other than pure silliness, you're going to have a bad time. If you're reading this, you've probably already watched the movie and for that I sincerely thank you and I hope you liked it. If you didn't...sorry, I guess, maybe you'll like the next one...or maybe you won't...maybe we're stuck in an endless cycle as we hurdle towards oblivion...Have a nice day.

-Paul Dale, Director of the film.

Deciding to honor a friend, a group of friends gathers for a special celebratory concert for an impersonator's show but when they start to disappear one by one while having fun at the concert, they find that a bird-headed killer is killing them off for not being true fans of the musician.

Overall, this was a seriously flawed genre effort. The central setup of the film about the group of fans coming together to celebrate the idea of a tribute concert taking place and everyone getting targeted because the killer assumes the target isn't as big of a fan of the performer as they should be is a perfectly silly and goofy idea. The type of jokes and confrontations that are in place here are perfectly suited to fill this type of setup as the absurdity of the whole thing is so over-the-top and outrageous that they come about naturally in this type of environment including some of the kills in the second half which are somewhat fun. Still, the whole thing is undone by a slew of issues including the lack of comedy in this type of film. As the whole thing is based on a one-note joke that's incredibly stupid to begin with, the fact that it's not fleshed out in the slightest makes for an infuriating time with the more amount of time spent on the group who are simply going through a series of lame, horrendously unfunny jokes. The inability to fix this shows off the kind of flimsy story structured around these jokes where the one-note joke of everything is highlighted to a point where the overall feeling is such that it should be kept as a short film rather than this feature-length one. The other problem here is the inability of the film's stalking scenes to delve into any kind of overt stalking scenes. Far too much of the few scenes show the creature coming up behind the unsuspecting victim to then either kill them off-screen or drag them into a position that renders it impossible to tell what's going on. As none of it has any kind of blood or gore of any kind here due to these situations and a goofy, cheesy look to the killer which might be in keeping with the type of film that presents itself but doesn't help overcome the appearance of it, these are what bring this one down.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.