Reviewed by Aaron Haynes

It was inevitable that there would be at least one of them. It seems less like a running theme and more like scripture at this point: if you don't have at least one badly made, poorly paced PAM in any given film festival, something is horribly wrong. One doesn't so much as review Killing Spree as examine what could have led two young, enthusiastic directors to leap with gleeful abandon at the chance to animate your usual action movie suspects doing their usual action movie things. What's painful about Killing Spree, what's REALLY painful about it, is that Tucker and Dash are so unremarkable in their gross miscalculation that even their immense failure is barely worth mentioning. This is just two more additions to the long list of directors who don't understand why movies about cool guys with sunglasses driving cars and shooting people is a bad idea.

To add insult to injury, it's not even coherent by incoherent PAM standards. PAMs are always somewhat questionable, but there are several tests they have to pass to be worth the time.

Camp One: First and foremost, the ability to recognize the difference between a PAM where the concept is reinforced by the action and a PAM where the concept IS the action. These are the cream of the crop, where a loose concept outline remains consistent throughout the movie while providing a framework and acceptable excuse for the action, which is always top-notch. Includes Litterbug 2, Ragtag Group of Rebelz, and Aaarnishoz, along with maybe a few others. You won't find Killing Spree here.

Camp Two: PAMs that think the action itself is enough of a reason to exist without creating a basic structure, be it zombie infestation, prison break, or Islamic jihad, but have stylistic merit and manage to make the characters' personalities work well enough to redeem the movie for the most part. This includes Diabolical Delightment, Texan Silly Boys 2, and both of the JDR movies, though they exist more in some kind of weird adventure movie category. You won't find Killing Spree here.

Camp Three: A shoddy offshoot of Camps One, where a crappy and inconsistent framework feels more like a cheap excuse for the action than an actual concept and ends up feeling like a weak attempt to justify the pointless slaughter. Most hate movies fall into this category, so think Killing Ramza Brave and up. You won't find Killing Spree here.

Camp Four: A shoddy offshoot of Camp Two, but characterization is skipped entirely for an attempt to get by on stylistic merit alone. Movies like this rarely use narrative or even dialogue, usually basing the action, consisting of rapid-closeups of the 'cool' character getting ready to kill people and unimaginative shots of them dying, entirely on the music. I'm running out of examples, but think of any Matrix ripoffs. There's a little bit of this in every PAM. You won't find Killing Spree here.

Camp Five: Consists of all of the worst aspects of the previous four camps, but lacks coherency even in its slaughter -- lurching stops and starts line the bumpy road to the finish, and we're sometimes asked to empathize with a new character or situation every five, ten, or fifteen seconds. PAMs like this don't even feel like movies, but as if the director receives a dollar for each time he follows some ADD-inspired whim to cut a massacre short by making the car crash, having a safe fall on the killer, or bring a random bystander into the story by having him become caught in the web of wanting to shoot things. This is my major problem with Mindless Psycho Killings. You won't find Killing Spree here.

Camp Six: THIS, my friends, is where you'll find Killing Spree. It would be unfair and inaccurate to say this camp was created for it, because as I mentioned earlier, we've seen this happen before. This is the moldy, infectious gunk growing on the underside of the barrel, the chain movie PAM. Without even consistency in its flipflopping randomness, Killing Spree and others like it rely on the gimmick of TWO directors following idiotic whims, bringing any pace the film has to a lurching halt at every available opportunity and ensuring a complete lack of engagement from any possible viewer except maybe Dash and Tucker Hime themselves.

What hurts the most about a movie like this is that you know Tucker and Dash are really proud of it and don't understand why people don't like it. It's even more confusing because there are moments of promise (sadly isolated in Dash's segments only, which sucks big time because I really enjoyed Tucker's East Round 1 entry in the Animation Tournament) and they try to introduce structure at the very end. Guys, don't waste time on shit like this. Even as practice it's a bad idea, because if all you learn is how to animate blood, guns, and car crashes, you won't be ready for actually DIRECTING later on down the road. Take a good, long look at the better films in the community, that aren't PAMs, and try to learn something about scenery, camera angles, storyline, plot, and character development. Your movies may not be the most stellar things in the world at first, but surely they'll be better than this.

Critical Score: 20/100.
Personal Score: 15/100.