By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Naomi Grace, Devin Druid and William Russ
Directed by Erik Bloomquist
Written by Erik Bloomquist and Carson Bloomquist
Dark Sky Films
The title and setting of FOUNDERS DAY might at first have horror devotees thinking that slasher flicks are running out of holidays to exploit, but it turns out that giving this psycho-killer saga a political bent is just the charge of freshness the genre needs. Election time has a way of setting people at each other’s throats anyway, and it here provides a background of extra intrigue that certainly makes the movie timely, though the filmmakers have wisely avoided too many direct analogs or allegories to the current political situation.
Writer/director Erik Bloomquist and co-scripter Carson Bloomquist instead play off the age-old conflict between “consistency” and “change.” In the small town of Fairwood, those values are embodied respectively by mayor Blair Gladwell (Amy Hargreaves, from BLUE RUIN and SUPER DARK TIMES) and her current challenger for the position, Harold Faulkner (Jayce Bartok). In the midst of their contentious competition, Faulkner’s daughter Melissa (Olivia Nikkanen) slips away for some late-night alone time with her girlfriend Allison (Naomi Grace), which is violently interrupted by a masked, cloaked killer wielding a mean gavel with a lethal something extra.
The interaction between Melissa and Allison appears to set up a bit of jeopardy that the Bloomquists subvert, making it clear that they know slasher cinema’s conventions well and are going to have fun playing with expectations. (The same was true of their previous film, last year’s SHE CAME FROM THE WOODS.) FOUNDERS DAY’s opening act also establishes a number of swiftly and effectively delineated characters, both adults and teenagers, whose interconnected histories are nicely suggested via looks and gestures. Even the roles that are right out of the traditional playback–from voice-of-reason teacher Mr. Jackson (William Russ) to j.d. Rob (Tyler James White) to prankster-jerk couple Tyler (Dylan Slade) and Britt (Kate Edmonds, giving off Sheri Moon Zombie vibes)–are played with the right earnestness and enthusiasm to register properly in the midst of the murderous scenario.
After paying tribute to ’80s summer-camp killathons in WOODS, the Bloomquists here homage the following decade’s slasher revival, most notably SCREAM, from the villain’s garb to the focus on a community, rather than an isolated group, coming under attack. This makes it a kind of coincidental companion piece to Eli Roth’s THANKSGIVING, and as in that film, there’s just as much going on with the grown-ups as there is with the kids. The violence threatening the teens, also including Faulkner’s son Adam (Devin Druid) and Gladwell’s daughter Lilly (Emilia McCarthy) exacerbates the increasingly heated conflict between the candidates, and the mayhem brings out the worst in some of the election’s key players.
All this keeps FOUNDERS DAY a lot busier than your average maniac movie, and in a genre where the horrible events often seem to take place in a vacuum, it’s refreshing and a little more realistic that actions, murderous and otherwise, have consequences here. Those deadly deeds, and the stalkings leading up to them, are handled deftly by director Bloomquist, while the brothers have fun teasing us with varied suspects and assorted red herrings in their screenplay. Viewers well-versed in this kind of film will likely be able to figure out at least part of the whodunit before it’s revealed, though there are a few unexpected curveballs in the home stretch that also satisfyingly tie up the story threads and pay off on the themes the Bloomquists explore here. It has all been shot with a great deal of visual panache by cinematographer Mike Magilnick (encoring from WOODS), and the film is both polished and well-populated enough to belie its modest budget. There’s even a cool credits sequence animated by visual effects supervisor AK Roy–which, in keeping with modern trends rather than classic ones, play at the movie’s end instead of the beginning.
