Movie Review: Scalper | HNN

Scalper Movie Review by Matt Boiselle

Scalper – written and directed by Chad Ferrin and starring Susan Priver, Jake Busey and Bai Ling

Synopsis: After everyone around her is being brutally murdered, a psychic must use her second sight to stay one step in front of the maniac’s blade to solve the mystery.

I’m always on the hunt for the next great slasher – a complete brutal force of a being with a penchant for swinging a very sharp implement, wearing some fancy duds and donning a mask that would make your Aunt Tillie’s compression socks unravel and fly off. It’s unfortunately been some lean times over the past few years (outside of the obvious Art The Clown, John Carver and the Heart Eyes killer), but my hopes had nearly come to fruition with the viewing of Chad Ferrin’s “Scalper”…stay tuned to see where this one ends up.

The movie, which acts as a sequel to Ferrin’s “Night Caller” back in 2021, this installment starts off in quite the sadistic (and queasy) fashion with a poor soul getting his hind-quarters introduced to the working end of a razor-sharp hunting knife, and with an ample mix of smeared blood and…well, you get the image, we’re off and running. After the events of the first movie, psychic Clementine (Priver) has been enjoying her new found “celeb” status, and finds herself thrown back into the mix when her boss (Ling) is murdered on the air of a radio show that Clementine happens to be a guest of. She then taps into her super-psychic skills to communicate with past victims to try to crack this case and figure how someone she killed in the last film has returned to slay again. Assisted by detectives Hayden (Busey) and Lupino (Kate Patel), together the trio hopes to end this brutality once and for all, but we all know deep-down that there’s going to be some serious blood shed, don’t we?

The film, in all its goofiness still managed to reel me in due to the actions of the Scalper itself, from its stolen cowboy boots to its second-hand face mask (you’ll get the pun soon enough), it was one of those honest-to-goodness moments for me that makes me appreciate the slasher sub-genre. Was it flawless in essence? Hardly, but it’s still entertaining enough to power you through the just-under 90 minute runtime. If you haven’t checked this out out yet, make sure to give it a spin – even the film’s cover art is worth a mention.