Slapface Review: An Overtly Bleak, Heartwrenching Shudder Original

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Isolation and abuse — both physical and psychological — can shatter a person’s sense of self completely, especially if the perpetrator in question presents their abuse as a form of love. This is exactly what Lucas (August Maturo) undergoes in Jeremiah Kipp’s Slapface, in which the young boy lives out an existence characterized by loneliness, harassment, and neglect. Horror as a genre has forever been bold enough to speak about about trauma and its ability to wrench out the most unsavory parts from inside of us, and Slapface dares to delve into this layered discourse, perhaps too well. Weaving an unsavory tale about isolation, bullying, and familial dysfunction, Slapface looms like an uncomfortable truth that is too desolate in tone.

Lucas lives with his older brother Tom (Mike Manning) in a woodland house and the duo have recently suffered the loss of their parents in a terrible car accident. Abandoned and having only each other to rely on, Lucas and Tom, while sharing a close dynamic, have a pretty dysfunctional bond after their parents’ death. In order to relieve themselves of their pain, Tom proposes a “game” of Slapface, in which the brothers take turns to slap one another (pretty hard) in an attempt to vent out their unspoken grief. While this is unhealthy from the get-go, Tom, despite trying his best to be more responsible, is pretty negligent towards Lucas, being wholly ignorant of the fact that he is constantly bullied, and shares a borderline toxic dynamic with his secret girlfriend Moriah (Mirabelle Lee).

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The abject loneliness and desperation that comes from being stuck with objectively terrible people in a small town have been captured in painfully visceral