Slaxx is a 2020 Canadian Horror Comedy directed by Elza Kephart and written by Kephart and Patricia Gomez, about an evil pair of jeans that murders people at a boutique. (Yes, really.)
At a Canadian Cotton Clothiers boutique, the staff are preparing for the launch of the store's latest product: the Super Shapers, an innovative pair of thermally-activated jeans that adapt and mold to any body shape. Unfortunately, the jeans they just received have a minor defect: namely, they seemingly have a mind of their own, brutally murdering people who try to handle or wear them. With the fashion influencer Peyton Jules on her way for the grand opening, however, there's no time to deal with this problem, even as it becomes obvious to everyone, save for the greedy manager Craig, that there's a most unusual killer on the loose.
Premiering at the Fantasia Film Festival on August 23, 2020, Slaxx debuted on the horror-oriented streaming service Shudder in 2021.
Tropes:
- Alpha Bitch: Both Peyton and her manager Barb.
- An Arm and a Leg: Lord loses his thumb, and then both of his hands to the jeans as they kill him. The jeans later dismember him and stuff his head, hands, and feet in a box for Craig and Libby to find.
- Artifact of Attraction: The jeans are capable of brainwashing people into trying them on when they look at the embroidered SS logo on the back pocket.
- Asshole Victim: Save for Libby and Shruti, most of the employees at CCC are hipster douchebags. This being a Slasher Movie, you know what's about to go down.
- Attack of the Killer Whatever: A pair of jeans that kills people.
- Bad Influencer: Peyton is a downplayed example. While she's not evil, she's still presented as an Alpha Bitch all grown up and an Asshole Victim.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Why Keerat lets Libby live, and even saves her from Craig. She and Shruti were the only ones who cared about her plight, and vowed to tell her story to the world.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Hero Dies, and a whole lot of employees and shoppers are now dead, but Libby was still holding onto the SD card containing the video of Keerat's story, so Keerat may finally see justice.
- Bland-Name Product: Canadian Cotton Clothiers, with its "ethical" branding, "millennial hipster" target demographic, Cult of Personality around its founder Harold Landsgrove, and Alliterative Name, is pretty bluntly American Apparel (except Canadian).
- Broken Pedestal: Libby when she finds out that CCC was secretly engaged in all the awful labor practices that it built its brand around not doing.Libby: You were supposed to be the good guys.
- Cerebus Syndrome: After the jeans kill Peyton and rampage through the store, the film turns a lot more serious.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive:
- Harold Landsgrove, the CEO of CCC. He knows about the sweatshop labor practices that his suppliers are engaged in, even though it goes against all the company's "ethical" branding, and doesn't care so long as he makes his money.
- The manager Craig is no better. With a product launch to attend to and a CEO to impress, he cares more about his career with the company than the lives of his employees. He even knocks out Libby when, after they find Lord's body, she tries to call the police, and later kills Shruti and tries to kill Libby to stop them from going public about CCC's labor practices.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: Keerat, while possessing a mannequin, uses a bloody severed hand to communicate with Libby and Shruti by writing on the walls. Since she's writing in Hindi, Shruti has to translate.
- Description Cut: As Harold hypes up the Super Shapers in a presentation to the employees, Jemma is getting torn in half by them in the bathroom.
- Devoured by the Horde: Craig, by a horde of possessed jeans. By the time they're through with him, they've stripped off over half the flesh on his bones.
- Fake Static: Jemma pulls this on Craig as she runs off to the bathroom.
- Final Girl: Libby is framed as this almost from the get-go, the one employee at CCC who isn't either a cynic like Shruti or an asshole like everybody else. Keerat even lets her live for having been one of the only decent people working at the store. She almost makes it to the end, but gets killed in the stampede of shoppers she desperately tried to stop from entering the store.
- Genre Throwback: To '80s horror films like The Stuff and They Live! that combined satire of consumerism with graphic violence.
- Ghostly Goals: Keerat wants justice for her death in a workplace accident, specifically telling her story to Libby and Shruti so that they will go public with it.
- Greenwashed Villainy: Canadian Cotton Clothiers is a boutique clothing company aimed at young hipsters who market their clothes with a "socially responsible" image of eco-friendliness and fair trade. In truth, CCC uses GMO cotton and child labor to make their clothes. The villain is the ghost of a 13-year-old Indian farm laborer who died in a workplace accident and seeks her revenge on the greedy Western corporation and consumers she died serving.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Jemma gets her entire lower half bitten off after trying the jeans on. Libby later finds her body stuffed under the bathroom sink, her guts spilling out.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: Shruti never notices the mayhem around her because she has her headphones on.
- Hipster: Many of the employees and customers at CCC, save for Libby and Shruti. Harold Landsgrove resembles an older version of such, but still dresses and acts the part.
- Innocently Insensitive: Libby when she assumes that Shruti listens to Bollywood music just because she's Indian. When Shruti takes out her earbud to ask her if she likes Green Day because she's from a town called Greenville, we hear that she's actually listening to metal. However, it later turns out that Shruti is a Bollywood fan.
- Karma Houdini: Harold, the CEO of CCC who is arguably more responsible than anyone for the events of the film, only appears in one scene and never gets any comeuppance.
- Killed Offscreen: Barb is last seen picking up the jeans off the ground, then screaming just as she steps out of the security camera's field of view.
- Naïve Newcomer: Libby, the new sales clerk.
- Neck Snap: The jeans kill Peyton by strangling her until her neck breaks.
- Nice Character, Mean Actor: Peyton Jules is personable in her public persona, but an Alpha Bitch to everyone around her.
- No OSHA Compliance: The Indian cotton plantation where Keerat died. For starters, she was only thirteen years old.
- Only Sane Employee: Libby and Shruti, the former too new to the job and the latter too bitter and cynical to be as vain and image-obsessed as their co-workers. It's why Keerat spares them.
- Peace & Love Incorporated: Thy name is Canadian Cotton Clothiers. They are obsessed with an image of social responsibility, emphasizing fair-trade labor practices and a lack of GMOs in the cotton that goes into their clothing. It's all a sham, of course, as they don't care about anything other than their bottom line, and never actually check if their suppliers follow those guidelines.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: Craig is a sleazy corporate climber who acts extremely deferential around Harold.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The entire plot of the film is about CCC's corporate hypocrisy coming back to bite it when the ghost of a dead laborer decides to get revenge on the company responsible for her death.
- The Scourge of God: The villain is the ghost of a dead child laborer taking her wrath out on the sleazy corporate suits and vapid consumers whose insatiable demand for cheap clothing got her killed.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Libby's last act is to desperately try to barricade the doors to the boutique so that the shoppers waiting outside don't get killed by Keerat. All she gets for it is crushed in a stampede of shoppers. The last thing she sees as her vision blurs and fades out is them getting torn apart.
- Short-Distance Phone Call: Craig calls Hunter over the radio after Jemma goes missing. Hunter was standing right behind him the whole time.
- Social Media Is Bad: Peyton Jules is every negative stereotype about fashion influencers in one shrill Alpha Bitch package.
- Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Shruti has worked at CCC since 1987, and holds nothing but contempt for the job and her boss Craig.
- Stereotype Reaction Gag: Shruti jabs at Libby for assuming that she's a Bollywood fan just because she's Indian, but it's later revealed that she is, and is quite embarrassed when Libby finds out. It actually saves her life, and provides a big clue as to the agenda of the possessed jeans.Shruti: Okay, so I like to listen to Bollywood music once in a while, is that a crime?
- The Stinger: Reveals that Camilo survived the entire movie in one of the changing rooms, completely unaware of what happened until he stepped out and saw the carnage.
- Villainous Rescue: When Craig tries to kill Libby, she cries out to Keerat to save her. A horde of jeans, all possessed by Keerat, show up and proceed to devour Craig.
- Wood Chipper of Doom: Thresher of Doom, in this case, but it’s the same principle. Keerat's scarf got snagged on the blades, dragging her into it and getting her butchered, soaking the experimental cotton used to make the killer jeans.
- Thank you for shopping at CCC and making a better tomorrow today!
