TRIM SEASON – Review

If you’re in the mood for a splatter flick with more gore than logic, TRIM SEASON might be your ticket. We first see a woman in the woods killing herself as if driven by an unseen force. Cut to a city, where we meet a couple of twenty-somethings, Emma (Bethlehem Million), who is strapped for cash; and her big-sisterly pal Julia (Alexandra Essoe). At a bar, they’re introduced to a guy who offers them temp jobs trimming marijuana plants. It’s quite lucrative, paying $5,000 for two weeks of seasonal work. The recruiter drives them along with a few others to a remote forested region miles from the nearest paved road. Though the year isn’t specified, it seems to be set shortly before weed growing was legalized.

They’re met by armed guards, followed by the farm’s creepy owner (Jane Badler) and her two sketchy sons. Badler is gracious and hospitable, yet with an underlying chill in her bearing. The latter will, of course, come to dominate the proceedings. Emma, who started with more doubts than the others, soon learns they were not groundless. Her more adventurous friend Julia tries to keep her calm to make the best of their situation. When the plot’s essential bad things start happening to the ladies, it becomes apparent that there’s no escape from Badler’s turf and that something supernatural is in play. Not in a recreational sense of the last word before this sentence.

The cast is an assortment of the requisite personality types, played by relatively unknown actors, other than Badler. That’s a plus in these gore-fests, whether they’re comedic or suspenseful. There’s less predictability about who will die, and in what order, since that usually correlates with their relative fame levels. Deaths occur in a variety of icky ways, as the genre must generate. Little visual or auditory detail is spared. Ain’t nobody gonna be dyin’ quick and easy, no how.

The story is almost as sketchy as the baddies’ character. Questions will remain unanswered for those who concern themselves with the cerebral more than the visceral. But if blood lust is your motivation, dive right in.

TRIM SEASON opens Friday, June 7, in theaters and on demand.

RATING: 1.5 out of 4 stars