WTF… Indeed
Sometimes a movie title tells you everything you need to know. WTF! — yes, the exclamation point is part of the title, and yes, it’s earned — is one of those cinematic experiences that makes you mutter those exact three letters every five minutes. Directed by Peter Herro, this 2017 “slasher” film (and I use that word as generously as the killer uses their knife) attempts to be a meta-horror romp filled with gore, spring break shenanigans, and self-aware humor. Instead, it feels like someone dropped Scream, Friday the 13th, and an Axe body spray commercial into a blender and forgot to put the lid on.
The result is 90 minutes of screaming, stupidity, and the occasional death scene that feels less like horror and more like karma for bad acting.
The Setup: Cabin Fever, But Make It Dumber
The movie follows Rachel (Callie Ott), a college student who once survived a massacre that we never really care about but are forced to hear about constantly. She’s traumatized, yes, but not so traumatized that she won’t head off to a secluded cabin in the woods for Spring Break with a group of human stereotypes.
There’s her overprotective brother Toby, her dirtbag boyfriend, the token stoner, the ditzy friend who exists solely to die topless, and a few others whose names you’ll forget before the end credits. Their plan? Drink, flirt, and forget that they’re clearly starring in a slasher movie.
Before long, creepy noises echo through the trees, a nail impales someone’s foot (because nothing says “tension” like tetanus), and a hooded figure begins picking them off one by one. The deaths are brutal, the dialogue is worse, and the mystery of “who’s behind the mask?” is about as compelling as a game of Clue played by concussed raccoons.
The Characters: A Murderer’s Dream Come True
Let’s be honest — in most slasher films, you root for the killer. In WTF!, you actively cheer for them. These characters are so aggressively obnoxious that you start mentally placing bets on who dies next.
Rachel is supposed to be our Final Girl, but she spends most of the movie alternating between shrieking and giving motivational speeches about trauma that sound like they were written by a chatbot trained on Tumblr posts. Her brother Toby (Nicholas James Reilly) exists mainly to deliver exposition and look perpetually confused, like he accidentally wandered into the wrong film.
Then there’s the boyfriend — a walking red flag in human form — whose idea of flirting is casual misogyny and aggressive hair gel. The other characters are interchangeable meat sacks with names like Bevan, Sam, and Bonnie, all united by a single trait: they die hilariously.
Even Perez Hilton shows up in a cameo so baffling that you start to suspect the movie might actually be a social experiment. He plays a guy named Donnie, and let’s just say his performance will make you nostalgic for his blogging career.
The Dialogue: Written by People Who’ve Never Met One Another
The script sounds like it was written during a frat party by someone who vaguely remembers what humans sound like. Every line feels like it was assembled using Mad Libs and Red Bull. Here are a few examples that sum up the experience:
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“You can’t run from your past, Rachel!”
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“Babe, it’s just a killer in the woods, chill!”
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“This party is lit, even with the blood.”
The dialogue’s attempts at wit fall flatter than the characters’ emotional arcs. The film clearly wants to be meta — to wink at the clichés while embracing them — but instead, it comes off like a drunk uncle trying to explain Cabin in the Woods at Thanksgiving.
The Horror: Low Budget, Lower Stakes
Now, to the kills — the supposed meat (pun intended) of any slasher film. Unfortunately, WTF! serves up the cinematic equivalent of microwaved leftovers.
There’s a throat-slitting scene that looks like someone spilled ketchup on a yoga mat. There’s a hairspray-and-lighter kill that could have been cool if it didn’t look like it was filmed in slow motion to disguise the fact that nothing was actually on fire. And of course, there’s the classic “stabbed repeatedly while screaming” sequence, which loses all tension after the first 30 seconds because the camera seems more interested in showing us the killer’s shoes than the actual murder.
The gore effects range from “Halloween store clearance bin” to “middle school science project gone wrong.” The only truly terrifying thing is the cinematography, which somehow manages to make even daylight look like a blackout.
The Killer Reveal: Predictable, Yet Somehow Still Confusing
By the time the movie reaches its “shocking” twist, you’ll have guessed it five times already and still not care. The killer, as it turns out, has a personal connection to Rachel’s past — because of course they do. This revelation is meant to tie everything together in a grand act of vengeance, but it mostly ties itself in knots.
It’s the kind of ending where you can practically hear the director whispering, “See? It all makes sense!” while the audience collectively shrugs and checks how much longer the runtime is.
When the final confrontation arrives, it’s less showdown and more show mercy. Rachel screams, the killer monologues, and somewhere in the background, you can hear the faint sound of your brain cells packing up and leaving.
The Acting: Everyone Deserves to Die, But With Feeling
It’s hard to blame the actors entirely — they’re doing their best with material that seems determined to sabotage them. Callie Ott tries valiantly to give Rachel depth, but she’s trapped in a movie that keeps confusing trauma with screaming louder.
The supporting cast vacillates between “amateur improv group” and “Instagram influencer reading cue cards.” Every emotional beat feels either wildly overplayed or completely absent. It’s a masterclass in tonal whiplash: one scene features sobbing grief, the next features a butt joke.
And then there’s Perez Hilton again, whose cameo is so bizarre that it almost redeems the movie — like finding a diamond in a pile of wet spaghetti.
The Production: Cabin in the Woods (Filmed on a Tuesday)
The film’s setting — an isolated cabin in the woods — is horror’s oldest trick, and WTF! manages to make it feel both claustrophobic and boring. The lighting looks like someone tried to illuminate a room using a single candle and a vape pen. The editing, meanwhile, seems allergic to continuity — one character’s shirt changes colors mid-scene, and another corpse appears to teleport.
It’s clear the budget was low, but passion can often make up for that. Here, passion took a vacation. The movie looks like it was shot in 2007 on a camcorder someone found in a pawn shop labeled “Do Not Resell.”
The Tone: Is This Supposed to Be Funny?
To its credit, WTF! seems aware of its own ridiculousness — it just doesn’t know what to do with that awareness. It wobbles between horror, comedy, and cringe so often you start to suspect the real plot twist is that there wasn’t a script at all.
At times, it feels like a parody; other times, it takes itself so seriously you could bottle the self-importance and sell it as cologne. (“Eau de Mediocre.”)
There’s a moment where two characters argue about who’s the killer while standing over a literal corpse, and the sheer absurdity of it might make you laugh — not because it’s funny, but because you’ve reached that point in the movie where madness sets in.
Final Verdict: Death by Dumb
WTF! is the cinematic equivalent of tripping over your own shoelaces while running from a snail. It wants to be clever, sexy, and shocking, but ends up being none of the above. It’s not scary, it’s not suspenseful, and it’s only accidentally funny.
Still, I’ll give it this much: the title’s accurate. Because when the credits finally roll and you realize you just spent an hour and a half watching a group of idiots get murdered in increasingly stupid ways, there’s really only one thing to say —
WTF, indeed.
Rating: 2 out of 10 bloody hair dryers.
Because the only thing truly killed here was my patience.
