Movie Review: Granny (1999)

A few years back I read on some horror forum or board that this movie was excellent, gruesome, and possibly banned from somewhere. Not sure how many people could have gotten that so fucking wrong. It's been awhile since I've seen such an amateur, sloppy, half-assed attempt at a horror movie. I wonder if they meant the movie, The Granny, from 1995? Or was it Rabid Grannies? I'll have to find copies and let you all know.

Granny is the story of a group of 7 college students who are getting together to welcome a newb into their ranks. Michelle just moved 'here' (wherever the fuck here is) from Seattle and is grateful to be accepted into such a tight knit circle of friends. As they sit around and shoot the shit they somehow get on the topic of paranoias. Tom thinks it would be great to 'show' the group his paranoia but they all have to leave so he can prepare a skit about it. Wtf?

Whatevs. The group leaves and returns in an hour only to find a note from Tom saying he had to go out. Uh huh. Whatevs again. They file back into the house, start whining and arguing about their total bullshit lives when they suddenly hear crying coming from the basement (though they argue halfheartedly about whether or not it's actually outside. OMFG, who cares?)



Pete decides he'll check it out, with no one brave enough to back him up, and then the carnage begins. Pete discovers someone dressed in a little house on the prairie dress, a cheap rubber mask, and a stringy grey wig who proceeds to hack him up with an axe. For some inexplicable reason, a psychotic granny is on the loose in the house and starts attacking this random group of people.

I'm going to tell you everything about this movie so as to spare you the agony of having to watch it. So if you don't like spoilers, stop reading now!

Are you still with me? Okay. Here it is. Granny kills everyone except Michelle. She finds a gun and kills granny. Then at remembering all the horror of the evening, Michelle has a heart attack and dies. At her funeral, the original group of friends stand around the grave, bemoaning their 'practical joke' and aren't they terrible people (the answer is yes, by the way) and whoa whoa whoa unto them for bringing such pain into Michelle's family's life. Cut to the cemetery road a little ways away and a car pulls up, the driver staring at the collected group, and I think the silhouette we see is supposed to be Michelle as she drives away.

What. The. Fuck.

Everything in this movie was terrible. The 'actors', the editing, the music, the direction, the wardrobe (seriously, the granny get up was obviously purchased at a local Halloween store), the story, and the writing. The all-around craptastickness of this flick couldn't even save it. Sometimes movies are so bad they're good, as in funny or at least entertaining. Not this one.

The granny seemed to be in multiple places at once. And unless it was two or three people in costume (it wasn't) or granny had the ability to bend space and time (doubtful), it blew a major hole in the story's credibility factor. And if granny is going to hack someone to death with a butcher knife in an enclosed space (the bathroom), I expect to see blood flying everywhere, particularly at granny. I don't expect a sterile environment, a clean knife, even after repeated stabbings, a spotless psychotic octogenarian, and a quiet victim.

Shame and failure color everything about this movie. The only plus? It's 58 blessedly short minutes of offal. No, I didn’t mean awful though it is that, too.

Absolutely NO hatchets (out of 5)