Parents' Guide to Bloody Axe Wound

Although there's a somewhat charming teen romance at its center, this gory slasher movie spoof is too full of aggravating logic holes and ideas that flat-out don't work. To start, there's the problem of the video store in Bloody Axe Wound. The movie doesn't offer any explanation for how the movies the store rents are shot (or lit or edited or sound-recorded or anything). They just magically are. And then: This is a small town. How has the video store existed for so long without anyone noticing what's going on? Teens at school are also aware of an unusually high number of murders ("I can't tell you how many funerals I've been to," says Sam at one point), but does no one notice that the kills are recorded on tape and available for rental?

Then there's the problem of Roger Bladecut, who looks like a movie serial killer (he has burn scars like Freddy Krueger) and who can somehow return from the grave, like Jason Voorhees. Why did he decide to adopt a daughter, and, more to the point, what agency would have approved it? Maybe questions like these are beside the point in a movie like Bloody Axe Wound, but they're there, at every step, and not even the sweet relationship between Sam and Abbie can distract from the movie's problems.