The 2024 horror film Lowlifes could be seen as a “Family Fun Day” trip in the country. (Extra points will be awarded to those who know where the family fun day reference comes from. *Hint: James Gunn.*) This tale of LA denizens stepping out of their comfort zone via an RV is delightfully misleading at first.
It feels like Tubi have outdone themselves with this cannibal road trip film with what seems to be no budget at all. *Check out IMDbPro and there is no budget information available. Yet the FX are pretty darn good Good enough that it feels like they had a pretty substantial money pool to draw from.*
the Story
A slightly dysfunctional nuclear family from Calabasas, Los Angeles are taking grandpa’s old RV out on their once a year road trip. They run into a couple of rural “hicks” who ask about their cousin Melior.
The pair come across as intrusive and downright creepy. They clearly are lusting after the family’s daughter and we instinctively feel that these are the bad guys here.
We soon learn that the real “lowlifes” are not the country boys at all.
The Cast
Calabasas:
Amanda Fix is Amy.
Matthew MacCaull is Keith.
Elyse Levesque is Kathleen.
Josh Zaharia is Jeffrey.
Country Bumpkins:
Brenna Llewellyn is Savannah.
Cassandra Sawtell is Juli Ann.
Richard Harmon is Vern.
Ben Sullivan is Billy.
Dayleigh Nelson is Big Mac.
Kevin McNulty is Neville.
Alexander Calvert is Deputy White.
It works
Lowlifes, at the start, feels not too dissimilar from the 2014 horror film Wolves. I did keep waiting for the country bumpkin fam to become cannibalistic werewolves. At one point one of them growls but his noise comes from a different place entirely.
Spoiler Alert:
The cannibals turn out to be the LA folks.
Writer Al Kaplan has clearly set this up as a metaphor about the cannibalistic nature of the film industry, aka; Hollywood, aka; Tinseltown. It could also be an allusion to film companies eating up the locals on location shoots.
Co-directors Tesh Guttikonda and Mitch Oliver do a capable job of bouncing from one scenario to the next. Despite knowing that the LA bunch were going to slaughter the farm folks, there was still that lingering doubt. Were the real villains the bumpkins?
The FX in this one are good. There are some eyeball shots that are on par with anything on Evil Dead II. The Calabasas fam VS the Bumpkins manages to produce a few gallons of claret. The viscera is not too over the top but it does manage to impress for all that.
the verdict
Lowlifes is a solid 3.5 film. It is a tad convoluted and definitely contrived but this slice of The Waltons meets a more sophisticated Pappa Jupe clan works. *Once again; extra points to those who know where “Pappa Jupe” comes from.* It is disconcerting just how much Levesque looks like a thinner version of Megan Fox. However, once you get around that small hurdle, the film is enjoyable, just not blazingly original. It is a “Tubi original” so streaming it with commercials is also a tad annoying. But, having said that, it is free.
The Trailer
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