DIY Horror Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong
Some movies are scary because of what’s on screen. Others are scary because they exist. Coffin Baby (2013) falls squarely into the latter category — a cinematic car crash you can’t look away from, but wish you had.
Originally conceived as Toolbox Murders 2, this film was supposed to continue Tobe Hooper’s 2004 remake of the 1978 cult classic. What we got instead was a reanimated corpse of a sequel, stitched together with spare parts, duct tape, and sheer desperation. It’s a slasher film without suspense, a sequel without a story, and a movie without mercy.
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if someone tried to make Silence of the Lambs after suffering a head injury and losing the script halfway through — congratulations, you’ve basically imagined Coffin Baby.
The Plot: Stockholm Syndrome with Power Tools
Our story (and I use that word loosely) follows Samantha Forester (Chauntal Lewis), who gets kidnapped in Hollywood by the titular Coffin Baby (Christopher Doyle), a serial killer with a flair for welding, branding, and bad skincare. He locks her in a cage, cuts off her hand for funsies, and proceeds to murder dozens of people in front of her while whispering things that sound like rejected lyrics from a Slipknot song.
After ten days of watching him butcher Los Angeles’ least fortunate extras, Samantha starts losing her grip on reality. And by “losing her grip,” I mean she literally loses her hand. Coffin Baby, apparently mistaking this for foreplay, decides he’s in love with her. He gives her an orchid, because nothing says “I mutilated you but I care” like floral gestures.
At some point, Samantha eats cooked human flesh — not out of necessity, but seemingly because the script needed to fill 90 minutes and cannibalism was next on the checklist.
The movie ends… well, it stops. Whether Samantha escapes, dies, or joins a vegan support group afterward is anyone’s guess.
The Cast: Acting from Inside the Coffin
Chauntal Lewis deserves some sort of medal — or therapy — for surviving this production. She spends most of the film crying, screaming, or sitting in a cage, looking like she’s reconsidering every career decision that brought her here. Her performance is earnest, but it’s like watching someone give a heartfelt monologue while trapped inside a Home Depot dumpster.
Christopher Doyle returns as the menacing Coffin Baby, and while his physical presence is imposing, his performance is basically 90 minutes of heavy breathing and chainsaw fondling. Imagine Leatherface with daddy issues and no direction.
Bruce Dern shows up briefly as Vance Henrickson — probably because his GPS malfunctioned and he accidentally wandered onto the set. He delivers a few lines like he’s just realized his paycheck bounced, and then disappears, presumably back to a better movie.
Brian Krause and Clifton Powell play detectives who seem to be investigating entirely different crimes. Their scenes feel like deleted footage from a CSI parody, complete with dialogue so stiff it could double as plywood.
And poor Ethan Phillips (Star Trek: Voyager). He plays the coroner, but looks like he’s mentally dissecting his agent’s career advice instead.
The Horror: More “Ugh” Than “Ahhh!”
Toolbox Murders (2004) wasn’t perfect, but it had a creepy atmosphere and a coherent plot. Coffin Baby, on the other hand, looks like it was shot in someone’s garage after a blackout.
The kills are gory, yes, but also numbing. There’s no buildup, no tension — just random acts of violence cut together like a horror highlight reel edited by someone who sneezed on the timeline.
The gore effects range from half-decent practical splatter to “did they just smear ketchup on that guy’s face?” quality. There’s an endless parade of corpses, dismemberments, and power tools, but it’s all so monotonous that it stops being disturbing and starts feeling like a YouTube tutorial for serial killers.
The lighting is an insult to electricity. Every scene is either so dark you can’t tell what’s happening or so overexposed it looks like it was filmed inside a tanning bed. The soundtrack, meanwhile, sounds like an angry Roomba trying to start a metal band.
Direction by Disorientation
Director Dean C. Jones apparently wanted to make a gritty psychological horror film but ended up with what feels like an art-house snuff film directed by a malfunctioning robot. The pacing is a disaster — slow when it should be tense, frantic when it should be chilling.
Scenes don’t transition so much as collide. One minute you’re watching Samantha sob in her cage; the next, you’re seeing flashbacks, hallucinations, or maybe deleted footage from another movie entirely. The editing is so incoherent it’s practically a jump scare on its own.
The film also has a nasty habit of repeating shots — the same corridor, the same corpse, the same screaming face — as if to say, “Remember this? We spent money on it.”
It’s the cinematic equivalent of a broken record: loud, pointless, and impossible to stop.
A Love Story That’ll Make You Swear Off Dating Forever
At its heart — and yes, it technically has one — Coffin Baby wants to explore the twisted relationship between captor and captive. Unfortunately, what could have been a disturbing psychological study turns into a grotesque parody of Stockholm Syndrome.
Coffin Baby’s affection for Samantha is supposed to be chilling. Instead, it’s weirdly mundane, like watching a serial killer go through a midlife crisis. He brands her, feeds her human meat, and then gives her flowers. It’s less “Beauty and the Beast” and more “Buffalo Bill’s Valentine’s Special.”
The supposed emotional core of the film is that Samantha begins to understand her captor. But the only thing the audience understands is that this script should’ve been buried deep in a real coffin.
The Technical Murders
It’s rare for a movie to fail on every technical level, but Coffin Baby manages it. The cinematography looks like it was filmed on a security camera from 1998. The sound mix alternates between ear-splitting industrial noise and whispers so quiet you’ll think your TV died.
The set design — mostly a single dingy basement — could be terrifying if it weren’t so obviously constructed from plywood and regret. You can almost smell the mildew through the screen, though that might just be the stench of wasted potential.
And the editing… oh, the editing. If you threw a stack of film reels down a flight of stairs and reassembled them in random order, it would still make more sense than this movie.
Behind-the-Scenes Drama, On-the-Screen Trauma
Part of the problem is that Coffin Baby was never meant to exist in this form. It started as Toolbox Murders 2, but production issues and legal wrangling forced a rebrand mid-project. The result is a Frankenstein’s monster of leftover footage, half-baked ideas, and contractual despair.
You can feel the filmmakers trying to salvage something out of the chaos — but by the end, even the movie seems to give up. It just… stops. No climax, no resolution, just a merciful fade to black, as if the editor whispered, “Enough.”
Final Verdict: Nail, Meet Coffin
Watching Coffin Baby is like being trapped in the killer’s cage yourself — except instead of losing a hand, you lose 90 minutes of your life. It’s ugly, incoherent, and deeply unpleasant, but not in the way good horror should be.
There’s no tension, no thrill, and no reason for this movie to exist. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a DIY lobotomy — messy, confusing, and leaving you slightly less human than before.
Rating: 1.5 out of 10 power tools.
It’s not a sequel. It’s not a reboot. It’s just a crime scene.
