Actor-writer-director Bill Posley (best known for his scripts for Cobra Kai) is clearly having a bit of fun with this cheap and (presumably intentionally) cheesy horror romp. An opening framing device has a purring Tony Todd introducing the story in the style of hosts like Alfred Hitchcock or, more recently, Guillermo del Toro, evoking the “’hood horror stories of old” like Blacula (1972), Bones (2001) and Candyman (1992) to set the stage for some Afrocentric scares. This film, he boasts, is the story of the first black serial killer to wear a mask, who goes by the name Bitch Ass.
Moving between a 1980 and late 1990s time frame that leaves plenty of room for sequels, Posley’s script posits a Black-majority neighbourhood in the Los Angeles area where low-level criminal kingpin Spade (Sheaun McKinney) runs a small gang of local kids, played by a gaggle of actors with distinctly patchy performance skills. Of the team, Q (Teon Kelley) is sort of the odd one out; he is less committed to a life of crime and secretly harbours ambitions to become a doctor, encouraged by his loving single parent mother Marsia (Me’lisa Sellers).
Spade sends Q and the gang to rob a local house occupied by the mysterious recluse Cecil (Tunde Laleye), and the kids get picked off one by one by Cecil’s alter ego Bitch Ass. The killer compels each victim to play him at a board game, all of them thinly disguised versions of well-known brands like Battleship or Operation! – or children’s playground challenges not protected by copyright like Rock Paper Scissors. It is indeed a bit like a cross between revenge-horror Bones and Squid Game. Meanwhile, flashbacks explain the beef between Spade, Cecil and Marsia that led to Bitch Ass’s vengeful inclinations.
The most out-there device in the film is Posley’s frequent use of an extremely elongated aspect ratio, sometimes carved up in multiple subscreens to show action happening simultaneously. It’s a really smart device that instantly evokes 1970s counterculture classics like Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls and other offbeat treats and Posley uses it inventively, adding to the fun.
• Bitch Ass is released on 19 December on digital platforms.
