Axed to Pieces

I genuinely WANT to like the work of Dustin Ferguson. The man (who for some reason insists on going by Dark Infinity now) cranks out an alarming number of titles every year and seems to have a solid knowledge of the stuff he's trying so desperately to emulate. Which is why I signed up for a month of his streaming service SoCal Cinema Studios on Demand. The hope is to catch up on some of his newer titles and hopefully come across some growth as an artist.

I chose Axed to Pieces as the first one simply because it had an appealingly short runtime and for the first 15-20 minutes, I was rather pleased. It's goofy as hell, but silly enough to be entertaining. Sadly, after those first few scenes, it falls back into Fergusonian padding and tedium that reminds me why I once dubbed him the new Nick Millard.

It is worth noting that he had a co-director on this one, so I suspect the good parts may not have been his doing. Still, it's his best to date, for whatever that's worth.

After discovering a strange ax in the woods, a lone hiker is possessed by a malevolent entity and goes on a vicious killing spree killing anyone he comes across, forcing a couple of true-crime experts to link the events together and stop the killing spree from continuing.

There was a lot to like with this one. One of the films' strongest aspects is the ability to utilize its timely set up for its own means and work around them. The idea of keeping the scenes focused on lone individuals or simply to distanced interactions out in the woods away from large gatherings serves this one well by keeping it continuously cycling through unwary victims stumbling into the killers' path and being taken out one-by-one. That aspect is really only noticeable as the film goes along as we see lone figures getting taken out, being on the phone calling each other or conducting research on the crimes in their homes so it tells a pretty consistent storyline throughout while still being mindful of the state of the world at the time. As well, there's plenty to like here in the straightforward and constant approach to the kill scenes requiring this to be filled with brutal indie-style confrontations. Working on the idea of the lone personalities out in the woods doing their own thing only to come across the violent killer and get knocked off, there's not much in the way of suspenseful stalking but instead goes more for the inherent brutality dished out in the aftermath. Not that there isn't suspenseful stalking here with the confrontation on the photographer or the jogger trying to take a shortcut through the woods but the more prominent setups involving the killer taking out the victims in quick fashion there's a rather more noticeable trend towards seeing the aftermath of the kills. These here hold this one up overall while there isn't much to hold this one back. One of the few issues here is the film's topical approach that renders the scenes rather obvious about their construction and general creation. Seeing only one or two people on-screen at a time doesn't share much screen time with each other. That enables the scenes to appear as though everything is undercut by the status of how it was filmed which makes for a suspenseless series of encounters where it constantly shifts to somebody else instead of focusing on building up its storyline. As well, this random-style approach also causes there to be a lack of build-up to the characters, the situation around them or the general nature of the scene, shifting to a new perspective featuring the next to be slaughtered. Some might find fault with this approach for that very reason.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.