Written by Timothy and Jennifer Friend
Directed by Timothy Friend
Produced by Jennifer Friend
Featuring: Megan Goddard, Ryan Seymour, Kieran Hunter, Santiago Vasquez, Christopher Booth
Big Atom Productions
Released May 8th
Brain Damage Films

Cadaverella is a dark spin on the Cinderella story that involves a slew of grotesqueries and incredibly dark humor. Set in modern times, Cadaverella has the advantage of having a set of incredibly talented actors to back it up and pick up any stray pieces that fall into the bad movie category. There’s definitely something daringly wacky but about this particular film, but anyone hoping for a clear-cut fairy tale will be disappointed by the jarring plotline, especially towards the end.

Cinder (played with class by Megan Goddard) lives with her Stepmother and two younger stepsisters. And she’s really sarcastic, bored, and unfulfilled. Her loving boyfriend (Ryan Seymour) is wheelchair-bound, making him a strange bedfellow. He’s also Cinder’s punchingbag when she’s agitated. The Stepmother (Kieran Hunter) or Step-Stripper, as Cinder refers to her, was brought home by Cinder’s father from a business trip, and she’s been a thorn in Cinder’s side ever since. When Cinder discovers Voodoo through her boyfriend’s college class on religion and magic, she conjures up a spirit in skullface makeup that wants to help all of Cinder’s dreams come true. Cinder’s dreams? She wants to have sex with the studly gardener, Cash, who’s always hanging around the house. She wants to get rid of her stepmother. And after Cash and her Stepmother conspire to kill Cinder for her inheritance, she wants them both dead. But you must remember: this is a fairy tale, wherein we must learn some kind of moral lesson. Everything, including revenge, has a price.

Better than most of the low-budget indies, Cadaverella’s cast sets it apart from the unwatchable. Megan Goddard’s Cinder is sexy and smart without being tacky or typical of women in sexual roles in horror movies. Ryan Seymour is amazing in two roles. So good, in fact, I had no idea it was the same actor in both parts until the credits rolled. He’s in an independent low budget horror film, but his performance is worthy of something far more expensive and visible. Kieran Hunter gets to play the comedienne with some truly funny lines delivered dead-on, and Santiago Vasquez is terrifying and imposing as the Voodoo Godmother.

Where Cadaverella goes wrong is towards the last third of the film. The editing starts to waver in quality and scenes become more hacked up and confusing. The “ball” that Cinder attends is more awkward than any other aspect of the film, and when Cinder returns to the “ball” to get her revenge on Cash, the fight scenes are sorely lacking in visuals. Lots of badly placed cuts during this sequence give the impression that the special effects footage just wasn’t good enough to use, so the editor left out of the film. However, in a later scene, the effect of Cinder crushing her stepmother’s head into a mushy pulp comes off beautifully. It’s a mixed bag of hit-and-miss gore, but when it goes right it goes really right. Cinder’s two stepsisters are played by very young children who don’t have much screen time. It’s a shame that these two potentially fun characters were left out of the storyline completely. Whatever the motives of Jennifer and Timothy Friend for writing the script that they did, they’ve got a clever spin on fairy tales and succeed in presenting a very exaggerated account of the love and life trials that some young women go through.

Don’t be mislead by the cover of the film; that’s not Megan Goddard, and Cinder is at no point in the film a zombie, or a mindless murderer. She’s a very developed and sympathetic character that gets the shit end of the stick in this fairy tale. Like Tempe and other Brain Damage films, sometimes the cover art is deceiving.

Cadaverella, as a fairy tale, is harsh, dark, ironic, brutal, and gross. But it’s much more like the original, and terrifying, Brothers Grimm story than the watered-down and ridiculously un-real Disney adaptation.