With it being right in the middle or towards the end of spooky season it makes sense for Squealer to come out. It is a horror movie with a bit of a sense of humor even though everything in it didn’t make me laugh all that much. It’s a horror film that falls back on tropes that have been done over and over again. I had hoped that this would be something new and original but it wasn’t. 

The film starts with a naked woman escaping from a man wielding a knife. She runs into a road and gets run over by an older couple in an RV. They bring her to a hospital where she is clinging to life. Before she dies she says “he’s coming” referring to Squealer (Ronny Gene Blevins) He is a butcher at his day job but he picks up hookers or ladies of the night at night and brings them back to his farm with his hungry pigs making all kinds of noise in the background.

Lisa (Danielle Burgio) is a social worker who has befriended some of the women who walk at night looking for some clients.  She has gotten herself wrapped up in the investigation of what is happening to these missing women. She has to deal with two law enforcement officers: Wes Chatham plays Jack and Tyrese Gibson plays Paul. They are both useless in this investigation with the first one thinking about having sex with his co-worker Kete (Rebecca Knox).

A third aspect to this story is a pimp Danny Diamond (Theo Rossi) He has something going on with Squealer and these women keep getting embroiled in this whole deal. They have a tragic outcome more often than not. One particular girl Sadie (Sydney Carvill) is a bit lost and needs guidance and Burgio’s character is a mentor to her, but she might have gotten herself too deep in this world. These three stories collide with a brutal ending.

The director Andy Armstrong combines a lot of things horror fans have come to see in many films in the past. He tries to give the audience characters they can get behind and relate to but these characters aren’t portrayed that well. Even though some of these actors are experienced, the acting in general is subpar. Some of these actors didn’t seem like they had done much in their careers. The dialogue is clunky and doesn’t serve the story very well. This is just a badly acted movie no matter how you look at it.

Squealer wants to get the audience into the Halloween spirit but follows so many tropes it is just another average horror film. Combined with bad acting and three separate storylines. They come together in a brutal bloody ending that could have been something. These characters in the film aren’t anything new we haven’t seen before. The Killer has an interesting premise behind him but he is bogged down by the other stories and the bad acting all the way around. This story is bland and one we’ve seen many times before. This isn’t worth anybody’s time.

2 stars

Dan Skip Allen