The 2016 “horror” movie was directed by Scott Wheeler and written by Nathan Dalton, Chris de Christopher and Rafael Diaz-Wagner. After scientist Luther ( Michael Swan ) discovers a serum that can bring back the dead, he accidentally spills some in his nephew’s donut shop. Now the town is under attack….. by killer donuts.
PLOT:
Spoilers ahead, I guess
Childhood friends Johnny ( Justin Ray ) and Michelle ( Kayla Compton ), are colleagues at ‘Dandy Donuts’, a smalltown shop that is running out of business. All the while, Johnny’s uncle, Luther has recently developed a serum that can bring rats back from the dead. That day, he decides to visit his nephew at the shop, even though he’s already been banned by their Mexican boss. The two getting into a short, but heated argument about it. On his way out, he somehow accidentally gets some of his serum into a fryer, infecting the donuts.
The donut shop only ever seems to have a few customers, there’s the hobo who never pays, a lady on a diet who comes in for her cheat days, a vegan hippie, and police officers ( because what else do American cops eat anyway? ). Johnny and Michelle take there job so seriously, that they even give an entire box of free donuts ( remember, they’re going out of business ) to police officers, along with free coffee. Not long after this scene, the diet lady opens her box to enjoy her jelly donuts. Due to Luther’s serum, the donuts have since grown long fangs, the ability to scream, jump and a strong taste for humans ( yeah, this movie is kinda stupid ). They actually kinda have a certain Gremlins style to them. As for the hippie, he buys a “Gouchnut” a vegan, full wheat, sugarless donut. Except it’s literally just a regular donut, there’s even powdered sugar on it’s top. Pretty much all characters are that dumb in this movie. He gets killed too.
Later, that night, three young adult males make rude comments about Michelle, while Johnny’s in the back. He rushes out and fights them, Michelle getting fired for pepperspraying a customer. Johnny quits with her. On their way home, they find a series of strange occurences. A man who they believed was a zombie, who farted visible green gas and died right there. They decide to turn back and elimintae the source of killer donuts. Acting like this is some sort of infectious, discease, even though it’s just a few man-eating donuts that would eventually be dealt with without their help.
So, the two ex-employees of Dandy donuts return to kill the horde of dozens of rabid, killer donuts. Eventually they lock themselves in a closet, thinking this is their donuty end. Except, they break through and escape. Blowing up Dandy Donuts, but don’t worry, they still serve extra Crispy Cream. That was bad-you know what? The End.
CONCLUSION:
Attack of the Killer Donuts, as you probably were able to figure by the name alone, was pretty bad. Honestly it wasn’t even that terrible, but I can’t exactly award it any medals either. The sad thing is, this movie could have genuinally worked as a relativley solid horror parody, simular to how The Cabin in the Woods uses a generic overall setting with one dimensional, but still found a way to completely flip the genre on it’s side. The main problem with the film, other than it’s cheap CGI which looked like it came out of a low budget video game from the early 2000s, was the writing. The film is full of plotholes that go literally nowhere, the dialogue is on the nose and pointless. There’s no deeper meaning, not subtext, no connection to some sort of fast food monster cinematic universe ( Though I wouldn’t be surprised if that were an actual thing at this point ).
To be honest, I’m not sure what I expected when I watched this. I literally found it by searching “Trash movie” into Amazon Prime, and this was the first result. In all honesty, the movie was oddly somewhat entertaining, somehow despite being as bad as it is, it has a weird charm to it, some of the moments being so stupid that they actually were a little bit, and I mean just a little bit funny. I guess this is just one of those “it’s so bad it’s good” kind of movies. Overall, I’d give this film a 2.5/10.
-The Screenwriter
Thumbnail belongs to Dion Hinchcliffe
License – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en