Review: Easter Bloody Easter
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No, Virginia, there is no jackalope. But that “legendary” critter — a somewhat grisly 20th-century hoax perpetrated by a Wyoming taxidermist with the brilliant idea to Frankenstein a creature ¾ jackrabbit and ¼ deer horn — birthed an industry of weird taxidermy. Because seriously, what gullible idiot wouldn’t want to see a bad-ass bunny with antlers and an attitude?
And the jackalope lives on, sort of, in this low-budget Easter horror movie — one of a very small number of such, virtually all of which are equally or even more low-budget and even lower brow.
In the stereotypical Southwestern town of Warburg, Texas, the façade of propriety and old-fashioned values lies lightly over fierce competition for what passes for social status in the middle of nowhere. One of the highlights of this wretched little hamlet’s social calendar is Easterpalooza, a weekend that includes the Good Friday Fish Fry, a Saturday “Bunny Hop” dance and, on Sunday, the remarkably competitive Easter Egg Hunt. It’s all presided over by pastel-clad church ladies like Marylou (Allison Lobel, who wrote the screenplay), who is as mean, self-centered and status-conscious as any of Truman Capote’s vicious, old-money, Manhattan-society swans. None of the proceedings are very religious and certainly don’t reflect Easter’s message of salvation through the sacrifice of one’s own life for the immortal souls of others ... which is noble but, let’s be honest, a real buzzkill.
Warburg treasures a quaint local legend about the time some 150 years ago when the dreaded cap-J Jackalope — a shapeshifter who morphs from human into a gigantic, horned bunny with glowing red eyes and fangs — wrought havoc on the local populace. Picture a leporine werewolf thing with big ears, a cute tail and a sweet little nose that’s always twitching in the manner of low-on-the food-chain creatures trying to avoid becoming dinner. The beast’s one saving grace is that it’s the town’s only claim to fame: When it comes to goosing the local economy, you exploit what you’ve got, even if it smacks of hucksterism and decidedly unchristian fertility-symbol imagery. (Come on: eggs, plus the animals whose name follows the words “breed like”?)
The story revolves around Jeanie (first-time feature director Diane Foster), who’s everything the town’s snooty what-passes-for-society ladies shun: not reed-thin, uninterested in social niceties, prone to day-drinking — in church yet —and waking up from being passed out in public. Jeanie’s husband Lance (D’Andre Noiré) has gone missing, with blood and fur on his car the only clues. The Jackalope has returned, along with a cadre of demon bunnies. And as Jeanie and her best friend Carol (Kelly Grant) begin investigating, you could probably plot out the rest of the movie yourself, including the comic trope of the professional monster hunter (Zuri Starks). The special effects are, on the whole, charmingly low-tech, with the bulk of the effects budget clearly having gone to the big bad — who does have his moments but doesn’t really live up to the poster. And yes, it’s all deliberately campy, but it’s not exactly John Waters country.
I do credit the filmmakers for trying to create something different, since, as mentioned, there are only a few other Easter horror movies, most of which also seem to feature bad bunnies. It’s the incongruity, I guess. Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottonhell (2014) — I give no points for juvenile puns, and you’d have to pronounce it “Cotton-hale” to rhyme with “cottontail” — features a vampirish human/rabbit hybrid. The omnibus movie Holidays (2016) has a segment with a man-sized, furless bunny adorned like suffering Jesus. I haven’t seen either Easter Bunny Massacre (2021) or Easter Bunny Massacre: The Bloody Trail (2022); the latter, with the same production company and distributor but a different filmmaking team, seems a redux of the former: serial killer in a rabbit mask, exacting revenge on friends who share a dark secret.
All these are small releases that go virtually unmentioned except in Easter-horror roundups, because Easter-themed horror movies are thin on the ground — unless you count pretty much all movies about Jesus Christ because, well: scourging, crown of thorns, repudiation by disciples and other followers, plus crucifixion/return from the grave. Yeah, that’s a horror movie.
As to why Easter is the unloved cousin of holiday horror, I’d say it’s down to Easter’s very nature. While it does celebrate joyous resurrection, it comes hard on the heels of the whole passion of the Christ, which is nonstop suffering and literal self-sacrifice, things much easier to respect — even venerate — than enjoy because, well, they’re no fun. And Easter does remain linked to pagan rites of spring through the iconography of eggs and rabbits, no matter how hard your most overbearingly pious relative, friend or neighbor would like to forget it.
Diane Foster in Easter Bloody Easter.
That’s a whole lot of baggage, especially since Easter (though widely commercialized anyplace candy, from chocolate rabbits to those hideous marshmallow chicks, is sold), isn’t Christmas, whose proximity to New Year’s, Hanukah and a number of other, lesser-known religious and cultural holidays lumps it into a general holiday season. Easter stands alone, like the Jackalope ... and that means Easter Bloody Easter, undistinguished as it is, deserves at least a little bunny nod of acknowledgement.
Easter Bloody Easter premiered on VOD and streaming on March 26.