Three Blind Mice review.
Another month, another slasher movie based on a childhood memory. While I still don’t know why this trend is happening…I think they might be getting better?
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Three Blind Mice
Directed by Pierre B
Written by David Malcolm
Starring May Kelly, Lila Lasso, Karl Hughes, Lynne O’Sullivan, Keith Eyles, Helen Fullerton, Natasha Tosini and Marcus Massey
Three Blind Mice Review
Slasher movies based on childhood properties have become all the rage in modern horror. Well…maybe not the rage. Outside of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey…they’ve been mostly direct to VOD affair. Last month we covered Mary Had a Little Lamb…today it’s Three Blind Mice. All three movies star May Kelly, forging herself a very specific scream queen career. Blood and Honey captured a moment in time that other low budget features are keen to cash in on. It’s all very much like the post-Halloween era of slasher movies. Except…you know…Halloween was a masterpiece.
Three Blind Mice is, of course, based on the nursery rhyme of the same name. Like Mary Had a Little Lamb before it…the source material doesn’t exactly offer a lot to go on. And the movie that takes its title doesn’t follow the narrative anyway. There are three blind mice in the story. They serve as the antagonists to the human characters. Where Three Blind Mice manages to be more interesting than its two recent predecessors is in these villains. Unlike those two, let’s face it, bad movies…this one isn’t saddled with completely ridiculous antagonists. I’m not saying this crew is great…but they beat the giant lamb head and 1000 Acre Wood knockoffs pretty handily.
The movie even bothers to offer up an origin story for the trio of murderous anthropomorphic mice. It’s not a game changer…but, again, it’s better than the other examples. One thing all three movies have in common is the meanness of old school slashers. The three blind mice are relentless murder machines who tear their way through everyone who crosses their path. Three Blind Mice even bothers to give its characters a better reason to be on that wrong path than we’ve come to expect from this type of story.
Abi (May Kelly) is a drug addict. After an intervention from her family…she is taken to a remote cabin in the woods for rehab. Yes…it’s the plot of 2013’s Evil Dead…but hey…this is a story based on a nursery rhyme. If they wanted points for originality a lot would be different. At least there is something of narrative interest before we get to the carnage.
It doesn’t take long for the titular mice to make their presence known. In fact, we get some action before the opening credits even begin to roll. Jumping right into the climax of a different character’s story. This is a trick that Mary Had a Little Lamb uses as well…though that movie calls back to it later in a more interesting way. Action comes almost as quickly after Abi and company arrive at the cabin.
Despite being blind, the mice use crossbows for some reason. It’s an odd choice that makes you question whether they’re actually blind. Later they are seen feeling their way along walls…so I guess they settled on yes for that question. Abi’s father is shot with a crossbow and the two are captured. It happens so early in the story that you briefly wonder if a different character is going to serve as our final girl. The mice quickly dispatch so many of the characters, however, it doesn’t take long to figure out who will be around for a while.
It’s the best aspect of these movies. The grindhouse-like adherence to brutal murders. The human/mouse hybrids even have some help from the rodent sized mice…leading to a couple great kill scenes. Three Blind Mice is a brutal movie…and that’s a compliment. Heads are smashed, guts are torn out…there’s a home invasion and some torture…the movie changes things up enough to keep the kills interesting.
So… what do we take away from all of this? Look, it’s Three Blind Mice…not Citizen Kane. I’m not saying that movies like this should be graded on a curve…but I will say that in comparison to previous attempts at this style of movie…this is the most watchable one. It gets sloppy at times and has some odd editing occasionally…but its commitment to being a passable slasher movie with a ridiculous premise is almost admirable. Dare I say…almost good.
Scare Value
Three Blind Mice probably shouldn’t be as good as it is. I’m basing that statement on the previous attempts at making this kind of movie from this kind of source material. In that way, Three Blind Mice is a winner. It’s mean spirited and feels like a throwback slasher…which, to be fair, other versions of this have tried as well. For whatever reason…it works better this time. It’s probably not good that I can’t tell you exactly why that is…but I’ll chalk it up as a win anyway. Fans of slasher movies could do worse. They need look no further than other films made with the same intentions.
2.5/5
Three Blind Mice Links
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Three Blind Mice Trailer
If you enjoyed this review of Three Blind Mice, check out some other new releases: Do Not Disturb, Fog City, Til Death Do Us Part, Courtney Gets Possessed, Devils and Dream Scenario
