2025’s Bikini Guillotine is a slasher film that features plenty of bikinis but not one guillotine. The motiveless killer is a man who wears a mask that was put together with duct tape. He’s definitely a bad guy, but the true villain of this film is whoever was responsible for recording the dialogue.
The first half of this 65-minute movie is made up of footage of several bikini-clad girls hanging out in a pool. They’re all carrying red Solo cups, which they pretend to drink from despite the fact that they’re obviously empty. Every few minutes, they all hold up their Solo cups and go, “Whoo!” The majority of the dialogue is incoherent. Either you can’t hear a word that they’re saying, or you can hear the sound of their voices but you still can’t make out what they’re actually saying. Occasionally, there’s a strange echo effect that does nothing to make the dialogue any more legible. Strangely, we can hear the Solo cups. One girl taps a finger against her Solo cup and it’s suddenly the loudest thing in the movie. Whenever anyone puts their Solo cup down, the sound of the cup hitting the tile reverberates. The weird soundtrack gives certain moments a dreamlike feel, but for the most part, it just feels incredibly shoddy.
(On a personal note, it was impossible for me to look at all of these Solo cups without thinking about the Flipadelphia episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Flip! Flip! Flipadelphia!)
A coherent, non-muddy soundtrack is something that filmgoers tend to take for granted. It’s not until you watch a film like this that you really appreciate just how important sound actually is. I sat through this entire film, but I couldn’t tell you the names of any of the characters or how they even knew each other. Maybe that was revealed in the dialogue. Maybe it wasn’t. I’m not sure what anyone was actually talking about.
As for the killer, who knows why he was even there or why the word “guillotine” is even in the title. The killer does not carry a guillotine. Instead, he carries what appears to be a chakram with a bunch of rubber worms attached to it. A chakram is a flying disc that is supposed to have sharp edges. Traditionally, one uses a chakram by throwing it. Our killer uses his chakram like a knife. Or at least, I think he does. There are many scenes in which he’s seen plunging the chakram down, but apparently there wasn’t any money in the budget for fake blood, so who knows what he’s actually supposed to be doing with it.
The killer also has the power to hypnotize his victims just by looking at them. As such, every victim simply stops moving as soon as he looks at them. Not only does it rob the victims of their agency, but it also makes for a pretty boring slasher film. It’s just one victim after another, with no personality or variety. That said, at least we can actually understand the dialogue inside the house. “Hello?” “Are you guys here?” Spellbinding stuff, as I’m sure you can tell.
Whatever else one might say about it, this film does offer two important lessons to the aspiring filmmaker. Don’t promise a guillotine if you can’t deliver. Hire someone who knows how to record sound.
