Bury the Bride (2023) Digs Deeper into New Lore for Well-Worn Subgenre
Title: Bury the Bride
First Non-Festival Release: April 21, 2023 (Digital/Streaming Platforms)
Director: Spider One
Writer: Krsy Fox, Spider One
Runtime: 83 Minutes
Starring: Krsy Fox, Scout Taylor-Compton, Dylan Rourke
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
The days leading up to your wedding should be marked with excitement and joy at the start of your new life. While these may be your final moments of “freedom,” nothing can compare to the idea of spending the rest of your life with the person you love. What if they aren’t exactly who you thought they were though?
It’s during her bachelorette party planned by her sister Sadie (Krsy Fox) that this question is posed to bride-to-be, June (Scout Taylor-Compton). After complying and hosting her party out in the middle of nowhere at her fiancé’s request, the group of women find their evening crashed by the groomsmen under the guise of getting to know the women, since June has refused to share much about them due to David’s (Dylan Rourke) request for privacy. They’ll all pay the price for this seemingly harmless quirk by night’s end.
Tense and creepy, Bury the Bride offers fresh perspective on old mythology with interesting lore and choice performances.
Bury the Bride revitalizes the look of a subgenre plagued by trend-hopping and unoriginality. Vampire films tend to adhere to a typical formula when it comes to the reveal and lore of their mythical creatures. What makes Bury the Bride interesting are the subtle changes it makes to the laypersons’ understanding of vampire mechanics while still holding true to what makes these baddies scary. By changing up the rules it subverts the audiences’ expectations of what's going to happen next and allows the characters to really think outside of the box in terms of survival. This makes for a more exciting and engaging story while also adding something new to the cannon.
While the script does make some cool choices, it never quite “goes there” and is bogged down by some mediocre dialogue. For one, it falls down the dangerous path of over explaining through dialogue the ritual and motivation of how this clan of vampires claims their victims. Furthermore, the contrast between the groomsmen and the bachelorette party makes for some cringe worthy moments of dialogue that can take the audience out of the experience. Hackneyed one-liners and villain monologues make for the worst dynamic duo in Bury the Bride’s script.
Strong performances from the central cast and decently fleshed-out characters add more strength to the flimsier parts of the story. The entirety of the cast does well in selling their menace or fear throughout the film, but the trio of Krsy Fox, Scout Taylor-Compton, and Dylan Rourke do excellent work in making their respective characters come to life. Fox takes on the final girl role well as Taylor-Compton assumes a more vulnerable and naïve foil to her. Sadie’s determination to save her sister using any means necessary comes across as genuine, making her an easy-to-root-for final girl. Rouke, and the rest of the male crew, portray their villains one dimensionally but with enough venom and morbid excitement to make the script work organically.
Perhaps the greatest strength of Bury the Bride is its unapologetic approach to tension and horror. Director Spider One knows how to craft a terrifying sequence of events. Utilizing the scant offerings of the desert locale, the team behind Bury the Bride finds many memorable moments within its isolated set to squeeze out the tension effectively. Among the best set pieces include a well-placed bear trap and a quarter-filled dead hot tub. Due to the nature of vampire bites, the stakes never feel too high. The vicious dialogue of the vampires, however, offsets that to the audience to believe that the women are sufficiently in danger, which makes their desperate attempts to flee even more heart-pounding.
It isn’t a perfect film, but Bury the Bride is a nice bit of fun horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Solid characters, choice subversions from vampire lore, and intense scares make this an easy watch that does enough differently to keep its audience engaged. This is another win for Spider One, as his first two feature films are strong suggestions that he has plenty to offer the genre. If this got buried in your watchlist, I implore you to dig it up right away to watch.
Overall Score? 6/10
