Offerings (1989) (USA)

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oklahoma-shot slasher borrows heavily from John Carpenter’s Halloween and fails miserably. Luckily because of that failure, it comes off like a Bizarro World version of the ‘78 classic and works for the trash-film-loving crowd. Young Johnny has a shitty home life and finds some respite in the company of a kindhearted neighborhood girl named Gretchen. Dickhole kids being dickholes leads to an accidental tumble down a well for the quiet and already-displaying-signs-of-a-psychopath Johnny. Never the same after the fall, Johnny is eventually placed into a sanitarium following the murder and partial eating of his mother. Ten years after that, Johnny escapes and heads back home. He begins picking off the former dickhole kids (now jerkoff young adults) and leaving various body parts for Gretchen as tokens of appreciation. The only hope Gretchen has is placed in the protection of the neighborhood’s overweight sheriff (yay!). The basic plot gives you some morsels of similarities but there’s enough there to tell yourself it’s kind of trudging its own path. Denial can only get you so far and there’s so much shit going on just outside of that narrative trail it becomes hilarious. The disturbance of a family member’s grave, John’s psychiatrist joining the hunt, the eating of live animals, and the climatic shooting of the hulking killer all make their way into the film just shot with far less talent. The dug up grave scene finds the cemetery caretaker an overacting and mugging weirdo, playing the scene for laughs. John’s psychiatrist is no Dr. Loomis (in any form he’s ever taken) and becomes an afterthought as the husky sheriff takes over the role of hero (something I’m very thankful for). There’s no discarded dog carcass discovered as the killer’s meal, instead it’s a few ducks by a pleasant pond. And that climatic shooting is a slow motion mess with one of the least threatening hulking killers I’ve ever seen. They also throw in some variations on Carpenter’s now legendary score and briefly mention Gretchen having some psychic powers. Sure. Why the hell not? Fat law officers and pizza with human toppings aside, Offerings is in no way a good movie. Even if it wasn’t a jumbling of a far superior film and stood on its own merits, it would still be called crap. But somehow, it works.