Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Kill Her Goats 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown February 21, 2024

*Stares. Blinks. Rubs his eyes. Is that a headache setting in? Checks watch. Thirty minutes in. Good God, he thinks. This is boring. And so, so bad. He grimaces at another obligatory topless scene. Thinks of how he'll make fun of the dozens of excuses the script makes to shed a shirt off a soon-to-be horror victim. Looks at watch longingly, thinking of all the things he could be doing. Forty-five minutes in. Other than the opening, still no horror. Still no kills. Is this all there is? Glances at cover art. Ah, didn't realize the cast was a lineup of Playmates. Explains some things. He closes his eyes, considers stopping the film and resuming another day. No, push through. Fifteen more minutes drag by, exceedingly slow. Promises of the beast. Supernatural perhaps? Dream sequences unfold. Are we finally getting somewhere? Checks the clock on his phone. An hour in. Still inching along. Wait... is that... He pauses. The goat-headed creature (killer?) appears at last and begins his reign of... terror? He notes the lack of scares. Squints to try to see what's even happening. It's so dark. How is anyone supposed to follow what's going on? Blood. Blood. Nudity. Blood. Blood. Nudity. Realizes for all the skin there's been no sex. (The future. Wife reads last sentence. You can't write that. It sounds like you want more sex in the movie. He's confused. Explains that's not what he meant. She laughs. Just edit it so it's more clear. He wonders how he'll make it more clear. An idea of an interjection from the future occurs to him.) No sex whatsoever. Other than the violence, which is now proving to be weirdly sexual. Not sure which would be more unappealing. Probably the chainsaw. Death. Death. Death. Lambo. Death. Requisite plot twist. Twists. Flash forward to the film's opening aaand... credits. He sighs, long and exasperated. What am I supposed to write about this thing? Someone's proud of it. But ooph. What a mess. He wonders how to open his review and begins typing...*

The clearest shot I could capture of our Big Bad... Goat.

Opening text! It's been a minute since I've read multi-panel exposition at the start of a flick. Classy, throwback nostalgia. No sarcasm. It reads: "Thomas Graham Tupp was born during the maiden voyage of the Little James in 1623. The Tupp Family rose to prominence in New England through fur trading and whaling. however, in the centuries to follow, the Tupps were marred by both fortune and misfortune. After the last of the known Tupps vanished, their cottage home on Cape Cod lay vacant. Until recently. This is an accurate depiction of events that followed the purchase of the Tupp House." Okay, got a bit shaky as it went, but it had potential. Then Kill Her Goats began and I realized what I was actually in for. If written as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the ludicrous, wholly unrealistic characters we were about to meet, or an intentionally silly nod to the creature feature slasher that was about to unfold, I might be more forgiving. As is, the fact that the decrepit Tupp House still stands (despite being unoccupied and in disrepair for 400 years) is the least of the eye-rolling plot developments on tap.

What follows the opening lore dumb is a brief, promising double kill in a tent in the woods that, low budget and cheesy as it is, boasts practical effects, a truly menacing silhouette of a beast (played by horror icon-behind-the-mask Kane Hodder), and some solid introductory gore. Gratuitous nudity is already in play -- it is what it is I guess -- but again, more seems promising than not. What follows that, though, is a wild downhill slide into sleepy formulaic Slasherville. A literal hour passes in which girls shower, girls talk, girls watch TV, girls eat and... more girls shower. It's meant to be an ode to the quote-unquote titillating horror of the '70s and '80s but none of those films drug nude scenes out this long, or found such tiresome ways to incorporate nudity soooo often. All of which was borderline painful... but the promise of ye olde Goat fiend (dubbed Goatface, ugh) kept hope somewhat alive. Unfortunately, the arrival of the creature, masked killer, combo creature/man/killer/whatever-it-is didn't improve matters; it merely made the half-hour slog to the thank-God-it's-finally-here end more erratic and nonsensical. Girls run. Girls hide. Girls die. Rinse, lather, repeat. Kudos on the practical effects (the movie's calling card) but more time spent with dialogue, pacing, plotting and lore would have been far more beneficial.

Kill Her Goats 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kill Her Goats features the sort of 2160p 4K presentation that would normally earn an easy 4.0 or 4.5 technical video score and a shrug of the shoulders. Digital sheen, low budget, film school cinematography... it all seems decent enough and properly encoded; other than the dark-to-the-point- of-blind opening kill scene, but at the time I assumed the film's darkness was stylistic rather than problematic. Fast forward to the hour mark when all hell breaks loose. Shadows occasionally become so heavy and murky that it becomes difficult in some scenes to determine exactly what's happening when the killer comes calling. You can certainly get the gist. I was never lost. But sometimes I just shrugged and went with my best guess. Otherwise the image is perfectly... fine. Skin tones are warm and lifelike, primaries pop (especially the blood, as is required by horror law), contrast is adequately balanced when the sun is up or the girls hang inside the house (not so much when the lights go out), and detail, though hit or miss (particularly the opening beach sequence), is pretty good when the lights are on. If only clarity didn't run screaming the moment night fell and the lamps turned off. All told, I suspect Kill Her Goats looks exactly as it was intended. It's shortcomings aren't the result of poor encoding, just at-times subpar contrast, brightness and color grading at the source level.

Kill Her Goats 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kill Her Goats doesn't include lossless audio. Instead, we get a -- here comes that word again -- decent Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track. I'm not sure the low-rent '80s-homage sound design could sound better, even if lossless were an option. Dialogue is too floaty and disconnected from the soundscape, effects are suitably clear but a bit canned (perhaps intentionally), and the rear speakers and LFE channel really only pipe up and kick in during the third act when the killer begins tearing through Audra's house, chainsaws whirring and whirling. Music sounds great as well, and dynamics prove solid. The soundfield, sadly, less so. Rather than an immersive fright-fest I sometimes found myself reminded I was watching a movie whose sounds were coming out of multiple distinct speakers. The lack of aural and spatial cohesion was disappointing, especially when also considering the absence of a lossless track.

Kill Her Goats 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The 4K Blu-ray release of Kill Her Goats doesn't include any bonus content. It does, however, include an approximately 3.5" x 3.5" vinyl hologram goat sticker (quite striking actually) and a blue envelope with a set of eight numbered throwback 4" x 5" lobby cards. The SteelBook case is the highlight of the entire release for me. It's evocative, hinting at a movie worth watching. I want to see a horror movie from that person.

Kill Her Goats 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If Kill Her Goats is meant to be intentionally bad, and hilarious as a result, I missed the joke. The first hour drags terribly and the sudden explosion of horror that does finally come arrives when boredom has already set in. It's nice to see Kane Hodder get some work, but otherwise, this one's a dud. As is the 4K Blu-ray release of the film, sadly. With a merely decent video transfer, a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 track, and zero special features, the at-times low Amazon price point and the 4K release's striking SteelBook is about all Kill Her Goats has going for it.