Boxcutter (2026) Review

Lucky Cerruti’s Boxcutter is a delightful surprise of indie horror that feels like it hearkens back to the good old days of small-time movies that ended up making it big. Like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Last House on the Left, it was made by a small crew who clearly cared a lot about this project, and it is quite astounding that so few people turned out a movie of such technical and thematic quality. It has its little forgivable stumbles, but Boxcutter takes the ingredients of your average old-school hicksploitation and bakes them with sophistication and emotional maturity. What could have ended up as a very run-of-the-mill backwoods slasher turns out to be one of the most engrossing and thoughtful horrors I’ve seen this year.

Rob (Evan McFarland) and his girlfriend Melissa (Liv Watkins) are weeks away from the birth of their first child when his abusive, estranged father dies. The two set out with his brother James (Tyler Nye) and his very new boyfriend Darren (Diego Rojas) to attend the funeral. When they stop by a shady-looking diner run by a weirdo family, you figure that it’s going to be the standard unprovoked hillbilly killing spree, but as they drive out of town, they hit someone with their car. They consider just making a run for it and living with the unspoken guilt of it all, but decide to do the right thing and flag down an approaching vehicle. This move puts into motion a frenzied, terrifying ordeal of revenge and self-defense that ends with a considerable number of corpses.

I have a fondness for horror movies that take this approach, of one wrong turn or terrible accident causing a chain reaction of terror, and this one is particularly emotionally charged. We get a nice scene between the brothers that establishes a strained relationship, one weighed down by their childhoods of abuse and neglect, and their respective ways of processing it all in adulthood. Rob, traumatised by his own father, is on the brink of running out on Melissa, terrified of the responsibility of parenthood and the prospect of never measuring up. James chastises his brother for his cowardice, yet when the accident occurs, he is the one most eager to just hightail it out of there. Darren and Melissa, meanwhile, are awkwardly stuck in the middle of the tension.

This turns out to be quite the family affair of horror. The main group ends up pitted against the diner family, who find their day continually descending to greater levels of tragedy. Far from the mindless massacre I had expected from the setup, it’s a confused mess of hysteria, rage, fear, grief and every other negative emotion that exists for these characters, one that takes a serious dramatic approach rather than ticking the boxes of the slasher genre. It’s a story you could conceivably believe happening in the real world, and for all the chaos, you can mostly understand why everybody does what they do.

There are one or two instances where the characters allow things to happen in ways that don’t make sense, when they should be fighting back or defending themselves or each other but make no effort to. The enclosed space of the basement that much of the action takes place in gives way to a lot of closeup shots, and the editing does let us down in a couple of places when it comes to clearly establishing what is going on. But it is otherwise a well-shot movie that leans into the grimy, dusty, sun-soaked Southern states look that feels characteristic of the golden oldies of exploitation. Georgie Rickard’s score works wonders for heightening the intensity of the action and creating a feeling of sensory overload that really sells the unrelenting mayhem. Conservative use of some surprisingly strong gore effects deliver horror that skilfully avoids veering into gratuitous or exploitative territory, further anchoring the piece in a place of relative sophistication. I certainly don’t look down on excessive gore in movies, but Boxcutter seems to want to be taken as seriously as a movie of its kind can be, and it walks the line very carefully by showing just enough to be horrific, but not enough to be considered too extreme.

Cerruti’s script takes this story to some unexpected places, and to the very end credits, keeps you on your toes and delivers some pretty devastating blows. The survivors you expect are not the ones you get, and the actions you anticipate are not the ones that end up being taken. It’s a simple story that takes its time, and it benefits from its more measured and patient direction. This is Cerruti’s sixth feature directorial credit and I anticipate great things from him in the future. Boxcutter demonstrates an instinct for digging originality and excellence out of well-worn ideas and tropes, and I really look forward to seeing what else this director will bring to the genre.

Movie Rating:

Boxcutter trailer