Lumberjack Logic (or Lack Thereof)
There are bad horror movies, and then there are movies like Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan (2013) — the cinematic equivalent of a rotted tree falling in the forest while everyone involved pretends it made a sound. Directed by Gary Jones, this low-budget wonder tries to take an American folk legend and turn him into a towering slasher. Instead, it delivers something that looks like Friday the 13th: The Pancake Breakfast Edition.
The premise alone deserves a participation trophy for sheer audacity. Paul Bunyan, the mythic lumberjack of legend, has apparently been living in the woods for over a century, nursing a grudge and an axe roughly the size of a Buick. When a group of juvenile delinquents disturbs the grave of his beloved blue ox, Babe, Bunyan emerges to punish them for their crimes against bovine memory. It’s a revenge story, a monster movie, and a PSA about not messing with livestock skeletons — all wrapped in the production value of a local car dealership commercial.
The Setup: Camp Crystal Lake, But Dumber
Our misfit cast includes five young offenders — Marty, Trish, Zack, Rosa, and CB — who have been shipped off to the woods for “rehabilitation,” which apparently involves hiking, camping, and dying horribly. They’re led by a hard-nosed sergeant (Tom Downey) and a perky counselor named Ms. Kowowzinkowski, or “Ms. K” for short — because even the script couldn’t spell her name twice.
Things start off with mild teenage rebellion and canned dialogue like, “This sucks!” and “You can’t tell me what to do!” But soon they stumble across the skeletal remains of a massive ox, which any rational person would immediately leave alone. Instead, Zack, our resident idiot, decides to rip off one of its horns as a souvenir. Because if horror movies have taught us anything, it’s that disturbing graves always ends well.
Within minutes, Paul Bunyan — now reimagined as a 20-foot-tall Neanderthal with hygiene issues — emerges from the woods swinging his axe like he’s auditioning for American Gladiators: Hillbilly Edition.
The Legend of Bunyan: Bigger Isn’t Always Better
Gary Jones’ take on Bunyan is a fascinating creative choice, in the same way that microwaving fish in an office kitchen is a fascinating social experiment. The movie paints Bunyan as a tragic figure: a gentle giant cursed by mankind’s cruelty, turned into a murderous maniac after loggers killed his ox. It’s a decent idea in theory — a slasher with a dash of mythology.
Unfortunately, Bunyan’s characterization is about as deep as a puddle after a drizzle. He doesn’t speak, emote, or exhibit any discernible thought process. He just grunts, kills, and occasionally stops to tenderly pet a deer before decapitating someone. Imagine King Kong if he’d dropped the girl and picked up a chainsaw.
To make matters worse, the CGI used to bring Bunyan to life looks like it was rendered on a PlayStation 2 that’s been through a forest fire. The scale constantly changes — in one scene he’s towering over trees, in another he’s eye-level with a pickup truck. By the time he skins a bear like he’s filleting a salmon, you half expect him to look at the camera and shrug, “Eh, close enough.”
The Victims: Axe Fodder with Attitude Problems
The young delinquents are the kind of characters who make you root for the killer out of sheer self-preservation. There’s Marty, the bland protagonist; Rosa, who exists to scream; Trish, the obligatory pretty girl; Zack, the walking Darwin Award; and CB, the token “good one” whose main function is to whine about her dad, the sheriff.
Their dialogue feels like it was assembled from rejected Saved by the Bell scripts and inspirational posters found in a gym locker. “We just have to stick together!” someone says, moments before splitting up. They argue, flirt, and make poor survival decisions with the enthusiasm of people trying to hit their word count in a group essay.
When Bunyan finally starts hacking through them, the movie accidentally becomes fun — not because of tension, but because of how absurd the kills are. Trish gets split clean in half like a Thanksgiving ham. The sergeant is bisected mid-lecture. One character gets impaled by Babe’s horn in a scene so ridiculous it plays like slapstick. It’s the kind of violence that’s so over-the-top it stops being horrific and becomes high art for the clinically bored.
The Supporting Cast: Deliverance with a Discount
Just when you think the movie can’t get weirder, Joe Estevez shows up as Meeks, the local hermit who exists solely to deliver exposition and chew scenery. He explains the entire Bunyan backstory like he’s reading from a Wikipedia entry — pausing occasionally to glare meaningfully into the distance, as though remembering a better script he once read.
Then there’s the sheriff, played by Tim Lovelace, who manages to keep a straight face while saying things like, “Paul Bunyan’s real — and he’s pissed!” It’s a performance so earnest you almost admire it, like watching someone try to give a TED Talk about Bigfoot.
The film also features an extended cameo from Dan Haggerty (yes, Grizzly Adams himself) as a logger who dies in the opening sequence, presumably as a form of career closure. It’s touching in the way a bad eulogy is touching: you’re not sure if you should laugh, cry, or change the channel.
The Direction: Straight to DVD, Do Not Pass Go
Director Gary Jones clearly loves B-movies, but here he bites off more than he can chop. The tone wobbles between self-aware camp and unintentional comedy, never deciding whether it wants to be Evil Dead II or The Happening. There are glimpses of charm — a few practical gore effects, some genuinely hilarious dialogue — but they’re buried beneath an avalanche of flat lighting, clunky editing, and a soundtrack that sounds like it was recorded inside a lunchbox.
Every so often, the film hints at a deeper theme about human cruelty, nature’s revenge, or the corruption of folklore. But then Bunyan smashes someone’s head with a log, and the movie forgets it was trying to be meaningful.
By the final act, the pacing collapses entirely. Hunters show up out of nowhere to fill Bunyan full of bullets (because nothing says “dramatic payoff” like a militia of rednecks shouting “Get him!”). Bunyan tumbles into a river, presumably to haunt sequels that mercifully never arrived.
The Aftermath: Bunyan 1, Audience 0
Watching Axe Giant is a strange experience — part nostalgia for 1950s creature features, part punishment for unpaid parking tickets. It’s so earnest in its stupidity that you almost respect it. The movie doesn’t wink or apologize; it genuinely believes its CGI lumberjack is terrifying.
And maybe, in a way, that’s the charm. There’s a scrappy, community-theater energy to it — the kind of movie that looks like it was made with love, beer, and access to exactly one fake axe. You can tell everyone involved really wanted to make a cult classic. They just accidentally made a cautionary tale about why Paul Bunyan stayed in folklore and not film.
Final Verdict: Logging Off
Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan is the cinematic equivalent of being hit in the head with a log — jarring, stupid, and somehow still funny. It’s a movie about a 20-foot-tall lumberjack with daddy issues, and yet it still manages to feel slow. The kills are absurd, the characters are insufferable, and the CGI looks like it escaped from a Windows 95 screensaver.
Still, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys watching bad horror movies with friends and alcohol, it’s a tree worth barking up. For everyone else, consider this your warning: sometimes legends are better left uncut.
Verdict: ★★☆☆☆
Axe Giant swings for the fences, misses completely, and accidentally hits itself in the face. Paul Bunyan deserved better — but at least now we know why Babe ran away.
