Emerging from the depths of Shudder like some long-lost episode of an adult Goosebumps, Destroy All Neighbors wastes no time plunging us down an endless tunnel of depravity. In the opening crawl, audiences are literally thrown into a twisty/turny credits sequence that promises a stylish horror gem. A trio of writers (Charles A. Pieper, Mike Benner, Jared Logan) craft a silly movie for streaming that should majorly appeal to fans of gooey practical effects work. If Evil Dead had a music-loving child with Street Trash, Destroy All Neighbors would be that dysfunctional baby.
We follow struggling musician William (Jonah Ray Rodrigues, Victor Crowley, Christmas Bloody Christmas), desperate to come out the other side of being a “knob twirler” of a music engineer. William’s neighbor gets a job with a major studio to make his dream sci-fi erotic thriller, and a replacement promptly moves into the apartment building. To say Vlad (Alex Winter, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Freaked) makes a noisy entrance would be a massive understatement. Sporting excessive facial hair and mutton chops, Vlad blasts his music so loud it becomes virtually impossible for William to concentrate. Winter fully immerses himself in the role, becoming unrecognizable akin to a Mike Myers-esque transformation.
Weirdly enough, William’s girlfriend, Emily (Kiran Deol, Murder in the Dark, Seven Psychopaths), does not seem to mind Vlad or his eccentricities. Eventually, Emily even befriends Vlad. Director Josh Forbes intersperses nightmarish sequences of Vlad appearing in William’s dreams, opening up the floodgates for graphic streams of vomit and bile. It is only a matter of time before William reaches his breaking point to actually confront Vlad. Vlad’s subsequent accidental death sends the movie off on a hilarious trajectory that is probably far more fun than it should be. If William thought Vlad was insufferable while alive, in death Vlad becomes a different beast entirely.
Destroy All Neighbors overflows with fun gags and gross-out practical effects. Any lover of 80s and 90s genre filmmaking should embrace the borderline-whimsical tone, skirting the line carefully between horror and comedy. Some will probably decry the inherent stupidity of the premise, or wonder exactly how or why Vlad and others magically come back to life. One either roll with the punches and lean into the slapstick ridiculousness, or just watch something else on Shudder instead. For a particular subset of viewers, Destroy All Neighbors should kibosh their expectations nicely.
Get ready to Destroy All Neighbors and blast undead tunes for the whole world to hear, exclusively to Shudder on January 12th.
