Sixteen Screams For Halloween: Day 2 (Llamageddon)

Good lord. What do you say about something like this? I guess you start with the mindset you have to have going into a movie like this. Some movies give you exciting thrills. Some give you insightful allegory. Llamageddon is not one of those movies. Llamageddon is the kind of dumb fucking movie you throw on with friends to have a chuckle at. There are all sorts of movies like this, but Llamageddon at least feels like it's laughing with you. It knows it is a dumb fucking movie about a killer llama, how absolutely gonzo that premise is, and just goes hog wild with it. Movies like Sharknado and its ilk are big budget variations of what Llamageddon manages with some cameras shooting at a house in the country for the weekend, and that's kind of impressive.

This is the kind of movie where one is lost for description or thematic resonance, so I'm just going to talk about my experiences seeing it. I viewed it twice. Once with my friend Kat on her Sunday morning movie livestreams a couple of months ago, and then again with a friend of mine who was visiting this week. The latter being a double duty watch of both exposing my friend to this dumb fucking movie and rewatching it so I could talk about it here. Oddly enough, the movie that Llamageddon gives me the most vibes with is unbelievable. It's fucking House, from 1977. I talked about House a few years ago in a Halloween marathon and you can read about that here, but the gist of it was that House was an absolute fever dream of a movie in which the cinematography and editing felt like they were done on the fucking moon. Llamageddon doesn't have that same technical ambition and wild visual shifting style, but shit just sort of happens in Llamageddon for the sheer hell of it. I want to highlight some of the weird and wild shit which happens in this movie, but I also want you to know the movie plays it completely cool. Paradoxically, it knows it is doing this stupid shit but resists the urge to wink and nod at the stupid shit it is doing. I honestly respect that.

This movie has a strange obsession with extreme close-ups, particulary on jawlines and mouths. I have no idea why the movie is shot like this with multiple scenes focusing super close on the mouths of the performers, but it just is and can only be described as a stylistic choice. Continuity is also turned into a joke, particularly with the character of Dan. There is a scene with him and the female lead where they inexplicably start dancing to non-diegetic jazz music for a minute straight. That's not the funny continuity joke. At some point in the movie, especially if you are watching with friends, someone will notice that Dan's shirt has changed. It, in fact, keeps changing. Every scene in the movie that Dan is in has Dan in a different shirt. This is not an accident. The filmmakers chose to do this because they thought it would be a funny joke, and it is. They don't point it out. They just roll with it and it's up to you to notice. Mad respect. I could go on and on about so much silly dumb fucking shit in this movie. The girl who texts the female lead, with the female lead looking at the floating texting messages added in via VFX instead of her goddamned phone. The fact that the same girl texts "AAAAAAAH" to the female lead after the llama has killed her with laser eyes. The fact that the llama has fucking laser eyes! The way the movie plays the movie again at high speed as the credits roll! The fact that this movie was deliberately cut to be 69 minutes for the "haha nice" joke that, again, the movie doesn't nod at and leaves up to you to get! Fuck!!

Llamageddon is a joy. I don't know if it's my favorite of the shlocky movies Kat has shown on Sunday morning streams (The Velocipastor is some shit, y'all) but I honestly kind of respect it. In this age of pop culture reference-laden bullshit, it's nice to see a movie have some funny self-aware jokes that it respects you enough to laugh at on your own. Llamageddon respects me, and thus do I respect it. God help me, I respect this dumb fucking movie about a killer llama. We can only go up from here, everyone. We can only go up from here.