Ax'Em (a.k.a. The Weekend It Lives)

When the first thing you see in a film is this, you know you're in trouble:

Yep, that's right, within the first second of the 'film' Ax"Em (a.k.a The Weekend It Lives), the film's final outcome is pretty much signed and sealed. For this is a film unlike any other. I thought I had seen it all with celluloid dog turds like Curse of the Zodiac, Manos: The Hands of Fate and Ben and Arthur. Oh how wrong I was. You ain't seen nothing if you haven't seen Ax'Em, a film that is below the bottom of the barrel. This is unquestionably, undeniable and unfathomably the worst film I have ever seen. Everything, and I mean absolutely everything about this...well, I wouldn't call it a film, but we'll call it that to make it easier, is so off, so wrong, so inept that I cannot even begin to describe it in words. My god. If you thought it didn't come anymore inept and misguided than The Room, then you are sorely mistaken. Ax'Em is so bad, it makes The Room look like Taxi Driver. And that's an understatement.

I don't know if I should bother telling you about the plot, since I didn't find one. From what I can gather, a group of people go away to some abandoned cottage in the woods (as you do), where there happens to be an axe murderer living there. Yeah, never seen that before. That's about as much as I could gather from the plot, and to be honest, I didn't really care. Hell, I didn't even know what any of the 'characters' names were. Nor did I give a shit.

I couldn't possibly tell you EVERYTHING that's wrong with this film, because I'd be writing a whole 5 page essay, but I'll go through the film start to finish to give you the main things that are wrong with it. Ok, here we go. So as you saw at the beginning of this review, the film starts of with opening titles that seem to be written by a first grader who's just learning English. Not only are they borderline incomprehensible, but we're given all but 2 seconds to read the damn thing, so we have to pause it and rewind to read it. Keep in mind this is all in the first 10 seconds of the film. Anyway, cut to an opening prologue where we are introduced to our characters, and by introduced I mean they all come on to the screen (there's about 7 or 8 of them), and they all decide to go away for the weekend. At least that's what I gathered. I had no idea what occurred in this scene because the audio is so goddamn terrible that I had no idea what the fuck they were saying. Not to mention the fact that the video quality was so blurry that I couldn't make out their faces. Next up is a scene which appears to be a flashback of the murderer going into a house and killing a man, and let me tell you, the sight of a 90 year old man being killed with a machete and crying out "Aw, shit" was an absolute highlight of the film. This is supposedly supposed to be our introduction to our murderer. No worries about motive or anything, we'll just accept that he goes around killing people for no reason. We then cut to an opening credits scene that is some dance battle thing that turns into a "Yo Mamma" joke battle. Oh, and this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the plot.

So our troupe of people go off to this abandoned house in the woods, which turns out to be the house the old man was killed in! Shock, horror! Once they get there, we have to sit through not one, but two extended eating scenes that are not involving in the slightest. These scenes aren't made any better through the fact that director Michael Mfume insists on just walking around in circles around the table. We're about halfway in now, and so far, nothing has happened. I thought to myself at this point that maybe it was going for the Paranormal Activity approach. You know, how nothing happens until the second half where everything is let loose. But then I thought that this couldn't be the case, because those three films built up suspense in their first halves, and we're actually good. Ax'Em doesn't build up any suspense, and just quietly...(it isn't very good). Surprisingly, Ax'Em goes absolutely mental in its second half, and will either have you in fits of hysterical laughter or will have you absolutely shell shocked at what you're witnessing. I won't tell you what happens, although you could probably figure it out, but boy, it is INSANE.

But what's wrong with it specifically, you might be asking. Well, the audio and video quality is just non-existent. In many scenes, you can't tell what is going on or what the actors are saying, a lot of the time this is in the same scene. There is virtually no production value, but what did you expect from a film that was shot with a budget of...$650 (I'm serious). In fact, in some scenes, in particular the opening prologue, you can hear the director call cut. Speaking of the director, Michael Mfune has some of the most misguided and clueless direction I've ever seen. There are scenes that are just so poorly staged, not to mention pointless. Just look at the scene where the chick is running through the forest and falls down 4 TIMES in the space of about 25 metres. Then you have dialogue like "You phatter than a swamp possum with tha mumps - boy you so fine I could kiss yo daddy's ass." Sigh. Dialogue like this makes you swear the whole script was improvised. Which might explain the fact that there is absolutely NO characterisation whatsoever. The non-acting by the cast doesn't help the cardboard cutouts (that's a compliment) that we're presented with either. The murderer itself gets no back story (unless the opening titles were meant to be the backstory) and no motive. He sounds like a constipated cow and is a complete ripoff of Michael Myers. And the preceding 68 minutes before the ending didn't set yourself on a mass murder hunt, then ending might just make you, for it sets up room for a sequel. That's right. I'm as baffled as you are. And the title. I understand why it's called Ax'Em, but The Weekend It Lives? How the fuck does that makes sense? The Weekend what lives? First off, that's not even grammatically correct, and if you're going to use that title, then at least explain what It is.

I could go on and on, but all you really need to know is that Ax'Em is possibly the worst film ever made. It is in my opinion the worst film I've ever seen. If you're desperate to watch it, it's bloody hard to find on the internet, but just for you, I'll post a link to the website I got it from down below. If you were smart (unlike this movie), you'd avoid it at all costs. But I know you. You'll hear BAD FILM! and get sucked in. Don't give in to temptation like I did. You'll regret it. If you do decide to watch it, make sure to take some cyanide pills beforehand. It'll be so much less painful than watching this film. In summary: FUCK THIS MOVIE!!

0/5

Watch if you dare:
http://stagevu.com/video/tocapewwripv