Indie horror director Christopher Wesley Moore (Children of Sin) is back in slasher territory with his latest feature When The Trash Man Knocks.
The nods to John Carpenter’s Halloween are quite shameless, with a killer returning to continue a previous massacre but this one took place around Thanksgiving.
As a Brit, I don’t fully understand the need for this holiday so close to Christmas, but it is another landmark which can be exploited by the slasher film.
When The Trash Man Knocks does attempt to carve its own path, but there is a bit of an identity crisis here as it wants to be a raw drama on one hand and in the other a stalk and slasher.
Where the film does shine is in the camerawork, which echoes the German expressionist style, and does its best work when it keeps the Trashman killer in the periphery, again much the same way Carpenter did in Halloween. Sometimes the threat of something happening is much scarier than the actual act of killing.
The lore behind the Trashman is a grizzly one, as he kills and dismembers his victims, taking a piece from each one in order to create the family he previously lost.
There is a commentary around believing victims, as a previous survivor returns, and is forced to confront the killer one more time. This is unfortunately offset with some supernatural elements which don’t add much to the character.
Moore himself plays a prominent role too as the son of the previous victim, and has some of the film’s best dialogue, including a harrowing monologue which helps to flesh out the character.
The Trashman’s mask feels like a cross between Art the Clown and former WWE wrestler The Fiend, but Moore keeps his story largely on the periphery, having him as an existential threat that can’t be reasoned with.
When The Trash Man Knocks is a serviceable effort and there is a decent slasher in there, it just gets a little lost trying to do too much.
When The Trash Man Knocks is streaming from 10 November 2023.
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