Baby-thwapers. Bukkake. Bratislava. Those aren't the three B's that The Office made famous; those are the three B's of Sander Maran's Estonian musical horror comedy Chainsaws Were Singing. The movie plays like a Mad Libs slasher satire of slasher by way of parody musicals, caught somewhere between Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Cannibal: The Musical and Troma's Poultrygeist (or any of the studio's earlier super-gory song-and-dance flicks). It's unapologetically low-budget, confidently goopy, and a ceremoniously silly take on "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre meets Dead & Breakfast." I'd say it can potentially be the next Hundreds of Beavers — an absurd smash-hit indie from out of nowhere — but some pacing issues prevent the film from achieving bulletproof greatness.
Everything starts like your standard Nicholas Sparks romance: just-broken-up-with Tom (Karl Ilves) falls in love at first sight with Maria (Laura Niils) before he throws himself off a bridge. The two down-on-their-luck saps fawn over each other until the bloodsoaked "Killer" (Martin Ruus) — a lunatic with a chainsaw — snatches Maria and flees. With the help of his squeaky-voiced driver-turned-sidekick Jaan (Janno Puusepp), Tom must track Killer back to his cannibalistic family's encampment and rescue Maria. It's a journey filled with action heroes named Cobra (Kristo Klausson), sticky-fluid cults, and brutal decapitations, but Tom will do anything to see his newly beloved again.
Chainsaws Were Singing feels like a wackadoo amalgamation of Vincent D'Onofrio's Don't Go in the Woods and Bartosz M. Kowalski's Nobody Sleeps in the Woods tonight. It's got the barebones indie grit of D'Onofrio's more unpolished musical elements (not a negative) and the slaughterhouse vibes Kowalski brings by the bucket. Maran proudly unleashes abundantly sloppy effects as chainsaws plunge into guts, buttholes, and exposed flesh, like something you'd see in a 70s midnighter. Fake blood looks incredibly fake, and intestinal piles on the pavement could double as Halloween decorations. The production confidently displays its comically explicit effects, and Maran leans into the humor of terrible CGI explosions or rubber balls as prosthetic testicles.
Maran's screenplay goes out of its way to portray law enforcement as trigger-happy buffoons or Killer's Mother (Rita Rätsepp) as the "Stereotypical Villain Mama" to an exaggerated degree, creating this illusion of dimwitted commonality. Lyrics poke fun at how quickly Tom and Maria fall in love, or how not all killers want to kill but are driven by mommy issues a la Psycho or Friday the 13th (Mart Toome provides Killer's singing voice). You're getting chainsaw instrumental solos, massacre spree ballads, and heaps of cynicism sung by cheery voices. Tom contemplates suicide through music, Maria belts lines about being beaten senseless, and Jaan gets his headlining number while being tortured by Killer's pale-skinned, blonde-haired brother-lover duo Pepe (Ra Ragnar Novod) and Kevin (Henryk Johan Novod). The entire experience is nonsensical and erratic by choice.
The problem becomes, at almost two hours, Chainsaws Were Singing is a whole mess of ridiculousness that gets carried away. There sometimes feels like an eternity between songs, or adversely, we get stuck listening to woodland wackjobs sing about their Bukkakke deity for some reason. That whole sequence feels like it can be snipped right out, and nothing much would change except missing a Ghostbuster-like refrigerator that glows purple inside and, well, cums. Promotional material for the film touts Monty Python as an influence, and while that's certainly apparent, the film doesn't boast the humorous consistency of, say, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Maran has made something gratuitously stupid as a positive for much of the film, basking within irreverent slasher in-jokes, but that's a tall order to execute for as long as Maran tries. There are lulls where sing-along gags flatline, making us ponder a tighter 90-minute version of what's presented.
That said, Chainsaws Were Singing still delivers as a mean-spirited musical with deceptively heartfelt themes. At random moments, I was reminded of everything from the Philippou brothers' hyper-spastic YouTube shorts to Rachel Bloom's delusional singing in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Maran's cinematic madness is never meant to be taken seriously, but should be as a hilarious sendup to backwoods maniacs, final girls, and slasher deviants who stop and smell the roses. As long as you can stomach no-budget traits like cans of soup doubling as vomit or grainy camera footage, really selling the do-it-yourself gumption that propels Maran's team, you'll have an absolute blast bopping along with the psychotic sounds of Chainsaws Were Singing.
Movie Score: 3.5/5
Matt Donato is a Los Angeles-based film critic currently published on SlashFilm, Fangoria, Bloody Disgusting, and anywhere else he’s allowed to spread the gospel of Demon Wind. He is also a member of the Critics Choice Association. Definitely don’t feed him after midnight.
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