History Film / AxEm

When the police arrived they only Found the bodies of his wife, Daughter, and younger son. His mentally Ill son Harry Was not ever found.\\\
Legend has it, he will return in 13 years to revenge his family deaths."''

The film follows a group of teenagers who attend Morgan State University, and make plans to head up north for a party at an isolated cabin. Unbeknownst to them, the mentally-ill son of a man who executed himself and most of his family has been wandering the woods looking for revenge, and soon comes to massacre the teenagers. What follows is a race as the teens try to survive and look for a way out before Harry kills them all.

The film was the first [[OneBookAuthor (and only)]] film produced and directed by Mfume, the son of former senator (and president of the NAACP) Kwesei Mfume. It was heavily panned during its initial release, and languished in obscurity for years until its release on DVD a decade later. Today horror fans widely regard it as one of the worst and most incompetently made horror films of all time.

* ExcusePlot: A group of high-school students go up north for the weekend, crack jokes about sex and pop culture, then get stalked by the only witness to a grisly suicide-murder.

** The "step show/insult contest" sequence takes up a good 7-8 minutes of screentime, and has nothing to do with the rest of the plot.

* {{Irony}}: In one scene, a teenager enters a seemingly abandoned house, and searches the place while loudly demanding a phone every five minutes. As he searches another room, what does the killer knock him out with? [[spoiler: A rotary phone.]]

* MacheteMayhem: Harry uses a machete as his weapon of choice, when he isn't using a baseball bat or a big handgun.
* MakeSureHesDead: After the other teenagers leave, Michael goes back, picks up a revolver, and fires several more shots into Harry. Subverted - it doesn't work, and he gets back up again some time after Michael leaves.
* MisplacedRetribution: The opening text claims that Harry Mason wants to avenge the deaths of his family members. If that really is his motive, then him targeting a group of random people who had nothing to do with said deaths is even more inexplicable.

* PlotHole: The opening crawl says that the killer wants to "Revenge (sic) his family deaths". Except we see in a flashback that his ''father'' (the one who killed his family) [[AteHisGun shot himself]] after doing the deed, and all the people he kills had nothing to do it with, making the reason for the killings unclear.
* ReCut: [[https://letterboxd.com/blairrussell/film/ax-em/ According to one reviewer]], the movie was reedited for its DVD release. The opening crawl is now littered with typos and at least 15 minutes of content were removed with the rest of the movie being reedited to compensate.

* StockFootage: In the scene where Harry discovers the teens trying to fix the car, the group shouts, "Oh, shit!" And then they replay it backwards. Also, the scene where Nikki flees and screams is played at least twice.

* TooDumbToLive: At one point, the surviving characters find a car. Rather then just getting in and driving away, they start hooping and hollering in celebration. This gives Harry enough time to find and chase them away from it.

The film was the first [[OneBookAuthor (and only)]] film produced and directed by Mfume, the son of former senator (and president of the NAACP) Kwesei Mfume. It was heavily panned during its initial release, and languished in obscurity for years until its release on DVD a decade later. Still today horror fans widely regard it as one of the worst and most incompetently made horror films of all time.