In the opening moment of Mark S. Allen’s low-budget indie horror, Don’t Answer, we meet a loving family in their van, driving to their quiet small-town house. When the family arrives, Mom notices the front door is left open. The father enters the house and discovers that the family cat was brutally murdered and mutilated. He heads downstairs where he finds Jack, the kid who lives next door, bloody and unconscious… before Jack violently stabs his father.
Years later, Jack is institutionalized in a mental hospital, but is now being released. His doctor advises against his release, yet Jack is given a new job as a food courier and even a plush support-animal cat. He moves to his hometown of Nicolaus, California (billed as “America’s Safest City”) to start over.
Elsewhere, sisters Molly (Annabel Storm) and Grae (Katie Klein) have just moved into a home, and it turns out Jack’s old killing spree occurred in that very house. Molly gives Jack a warm welcome compared to the rest of the town, where he meets nothing but disdain. During an incident at the local diner, Jack takes matters into his own hands as he deals with two bullies. Has the small town pushed Jack beyond the breaking point?
“Has the small town of Nicolaus pushed Jack beyond the breaking point?”
Don’t Answer is very much a low-budget B-movie slasher. That’s where you find its charm. You have a semi-sympathetic serial killer who just wants to live his life in peace and serenity, only to have it ruined by people. The acting is over-the-top…like it should be, and the gore is gory enough on a modestly low budget. Now, add a handheld camera and permission to murder in nearby homes, and you have yourself the makings of a basic horror film.
With all the blood, impalements, and fake cat mutilations, you know that shooting this film was fun, and we’re having fun at the same time. Jack Amsler plays the killer Jack with a great deal of stoicism and pent-up rage. Jessica Norman is perfect as the final girl with a bubbly, all-American attitude and, in some way, the adult in the room.
Don’t Answer delivers exactly what it promises — a brutal, bloody good time wrapped in small-town paranoia. It’s a scrappy indie slasher that proves you don’t need a big budget to have big scares and plenty of fun.
"…don’t need a big budget to have big scares..."
Well, if the point was to portray a released mental patient with a murderous past whose intent to lead a good, productive life is undone by his experiences on the outside (see: “Psycho II”), that doesn’t come off. In his exit interview from the institution, Jack (a very good Jack Amsler) is so coldly, impassively hostile he seems to be counting the minutes till he can get back to his long interrupted killing mayhem. And in fact, he starts murdering again so quickly and with so little buildup I thought the first few killings might just be his dark fantasies (there are a lot of creepy well-done flashbacks to his psychotic childhood) And there is never a clear transition from his homicides in response to being treated badly to just killing for the sake of it. When he delivers a package to who turns out to be the final girl, Molly (Annabel Storm, also good) their friendly interaction leads us to think there’ll be some development between them and presumably create a conflict in the inevitable climactic showdown. But no, although film keeps cutting from Jack’s rampage to uninteresting scenes with Molly and her sister, they’re completely separate and by the time Jack decides it’s her turn to die it’s as if she’s just another random victim he’s never met before
The murders themselves are almost all effective in blackly funny ways. And there is good use of overhead shots (the director seems to have just been gifted his first camera drone and can’t get enough of it), the best being one of a delivery van driving away at the end, which I won’t further describe