Directed by Joe Zombie.

Today’s Tubi Original is Bury The Bride, a 2023 horror film directed by Spider One, aka John Zombie, aka Michael David Cummings, aka the younger brother of Rob Zombie. As one of the only people on Earth to both watch and enjoy Rob Zombie’s Munsters reboot, I had some good hopes for this film. At the very least, I’m pretty sure that if John Zombie put out a horror film that relied on CGI blood splatters, that Rob Zombie would literally beat the shit out of him at the family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

As John Zombie’s second directorial role in a feature length film, Bury The Bride leads Scout Taylor-Compton as June, a woman about to get married. June is celebrating her upcoming wedding with her best friends. Or well, her friends. I don’t know, the only women she knows the names of. June is joined by Sadie, Carmen, Liz, and Betty who make up the Burger King Kid’s Club of stereotypical white women friends. Sadie is the bitter jealous divorced sister, Carmen is the drunken slut, Liz is the uptight nerd, and Betty is also there. Sadie is willing to go far and wide to create a diverse group of friends, provided none of them are black.

I’m not surprised to see Scout Taylor-Compton in this film, being a Zombie family production. Carmen is played by Lyndsi LaRose whose career has sadly not blown up since her appearance as Emily in the first Ant-Man movie, Hank Pym’s housecleaner. Liz is played by Rachel Brunner who is no stranger to C-tier horror shlock, and then there’s Katie Ryan as Betty who as I said is also here. The scenes where the women are by themselves are almost unwatchable as their personalities involve saying fuck a lot and turning minor slights into big arguments that just get glossed over in the next camera cut.

Rachel Brunner realized how bad the start was going to be and literally brought a book to read on set while they were filming the women’s scenes. All of the women in this movie can barely stand being around one another, and I can’t really blame them for being pissed at June given she invited them out for a bachelorette party and it turned out to be sitting on their asses in a shit hole murder shack in the middle of the desert.

The house party is broken up by June’s fiancée David played by Dylan Rourke and kudos to Dylan Rourke for really giving this movie 110%. Some people ham it up for these types of films but Dylan supplies the whole hog, and the movie is so much better for it. From his quieter lines to his more energetic monologues, Dylan really steals the show from the other actors. Dylan is accompanied by his group of redneck friends; Puppy, Mike, and Bobby. Puppy, who spends most of the film completely mute, is played by none other than Chaz Bono who after watching his performance I would like to nominate as the new Kevin Smith to replace him as Silent Bob now that Kevin is the worst part of his own films.

Adam Marcinowski plays Mike with Cameron Cowperthwaite as Bobby. We learn pretty quick that David and crew aren’t quite the classless rednecks they come across as, but actually are vampires. And what do the vampires do? Vampire shit. Eat people. Drink booze. This is possibly the most hetero-facing group of vampires in the last two decades of film.

I will give points to this film on one. It uses practical blood effects which is a sad rarity in the world of low budget horror films. Practical blood splatters are like the maple syrup of the film world. Even the worst attempt at it is better than the artificial stuff. It’s very rare that a film has CG blood splats that gets above a D grade for me, not because that shifts the score on its own (although I do take a full letter grade off) but it is a symptom of the overall quality. The kills aren’t bad either, although it’s kind of funny how easily the women kill the vampires.

I’m a little jealous of the characters in this film. On a good night I might wake up two to three times every night and take a good hour to get to sleep, but the women in this movie get kidnapped and tied up and thrown in a barn and they all manage to have a really good night’s sleep all thing’s considered.

There’s a few morals to be had with this movie. One, every group of white woman friends needs at least one black woman to pump the brakes on having a bachelorette party in a redneck murder shack for a fiancée none of them have even met. The second is that people having emotional breakdowns at the slightest criticism of their to-be-husband aren’t really convincing when they say “this is what happiness looks like”.

The third act of this film is without a doubt the best part, right up until the last few minutes where it almost feels like an arthouse movie. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me someone else entirely directed the last ten minutes of the film. Either way, this movie is both a cut above what you’d expect from a Tubi original and also exactly what you’d expect from a Tubi original horror film. Its characters are painfully stupid in the way you’d expect slasher movie character to be, and there are gaping logic holes, but whatever.

Rating: C+

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