Lowlifes (2024) – Film Review

Lowlifes is a Canadian slasher horror film that breaks a few taboos by incorporating scenes of cannibalism. I have to admit this film surprised me because it went a somewhat different route to the one I expected.

I’m sorry but this review contains a few spoilers, so if you want to avoid them, better stop reading now.

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Okay. Here we go…

Lowlifes begins with a short nighttime scene showing a man fleeing a someone carrying a knife, who catches up quickly and slits his throat. I’m not a lover of scenes like this, but must admit that it’s very well done and should appeal to viewers who are used to watching films that have plenty of gushing blood.

The next scene shows an old RV, travelling slowly through the countryside. The RV inhabitants, a family of four, stop to have a barbecue at the side of the road. Then a couple of stereotypical hillbillies turn up looking for their cousin, Melior, who has gone missing. Although they aren’t overtly hostile, the men’s behavior towards the family is somewhat intimidating. However, when the head of the family, Keith (Matthew MacCaull), makes it clear they have outstayed their welcome, the two intruders go, and the family return to their vehicle and resume their journey. They don’t get far. A little way down the road, they encounter the two hillbillies again. Their pickup has apparently broken down, is blocking the road, and one of them has a shotgun.

Keith’s wife Kathleen (Elyse Levesque) wants him to drive around the vehicle, but Keith doesn’t think it’s a good idea to upset someone with a shotgun, so he stops. Vern, the man with the gun (Richard Harmon), pressures Keith into giving his cousin Billy (Ben Sullivan) a lift home. Ignoring his wife’s continued protests, Keith agrees to do so and Billy gets in the RV.

During the Journey, Billy is surprisingly well-behaved, but is hopelessly out of his depth when he begins playing a word game with Keith and Kathleen’s son Jeffrey (Josh Zaharia); while their daughter, Amy (Amanda Fix), watches from the bedroom. While they are playing, Billy notices Jeffrey’s book has handwriting in it that resembles his cousin Melior’s. When Kathleen asks him why he thinks it’s Melior’s writing, Billy draws attention to the backwards letter Rs and the squiggly Ls. Then, for Billy, that’s all she wrote because Jeffrey, who has moved behind him, brings down a couple of knives into into his neck; and Zaharia gets full marks for his portrayal of an evil game face.

Billy’s murder took me totally by surprise. If it wasn’t for this review, it probably would have done the same with you. Sorry. I couldn’t think of a way to provide a good film taster without including this information. Lowlifes avoids the obvious wrong turn type of storyline and switches everything around. Although Keith and his family look like average people, their yearly vacations are bouts of recreational killing and, as with a lot of hunters, they love to eat their prey.

After dissecting Billy’s body into manageable chunks and placing the meat in their freezer, the family continue to Billy’s house, planning to have some more sport with his great uncle Neville (Kevin McNulty) and two cousins, Juli Ann (Cassandra Sawtell) and Savannah (Brenna Llewellyn). Using the pretense that they have broken down, they worm their way into the house, where Neville is quick to invite them to join the family for dinner.

However, as the killers are getting ready to grab their weapons and make their move, Juli Ann’s husband, Big Mac (Dayleigh Nelson), arrives home; the floor shaking beneath him, forcing Keith and his family to reconsider their game plan. As it turns out, the big man isn’t their greatest obstacle. His sister-in-law, Savannah, is tougher than she looks. She’s also very smart and, in addition to playing the piano beautifully, has amassed quite a nice collection of trophies for her archery skills.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn how the film got its name: Keith considers the hillbillies to be lowlifes. However, during an argument with Kathleen, it emerges they normally prey on drifters and the homeless. She isn’t fully onboard with the plan to murder their hosts. Nor does she appear to relish killing people anymore, but she seems happy enough to help with butchering the bodies and chowing down on the meat.

Keith isn’t happy with her reluctance to kill, feeling it sets a bad example for the kids. Nor is he a fan of the pills she takes, which he feels are preventing him from getting his old wife back, and finally takes matters in hand by confiscating them. It’s never explained what the pills are, but it seems likely they are anti-psychotics.

There is also a certain amount of sibling rivalry between Jeffrey and Amy. This is made worse by the fact that Keith and Kathleen seem to favor their daughter over their son because she has better self-control and cleans up after herself, while they see Jeffrey as reckless and a source of potential problems.

However, Amy appears to be losing interest in their yearly vacation. She’s also secretly a lesbian, and when this comes out later in the film, she tells her father she’d rather eat pussies than people. That may be so but it does little to stop her from killing them.

By contrast, Neville and his family are very caring towards each other, and although Savannah could probably do much more with her life than running the homestead, it hasn’t caused her to become bitter or nasty. It’s a nice family. The real lowlifes are the ones who came knocking at their door.

It’s hard to fault this film. The storyline is good, the acting is solid and the special effects are okay—with cringe-worthy scenes of dismemberment. I prefer films where the nastiness happens off-camera, but many horror film viewers don’t and are unlikely to bat an eye when things get messy.

If you decide to watch Lowlifes, it’s unlikely you will get bored. There’s always plenty going on. However, if scenes of chopped-up body parts or people eating eyeballs or frying tongues is likely to offend, it won’t be a good choice.

I’m not crazy about the way everything turns out. Lowlifes doesn’t have the kind of ending I enjoy, but it’s in keeping with main storyline, and, at least for one of the characters, you could deem it a happy ending.