If you see only ONE Estonian horror musical this year, make it Chainsaws Were Singing!

How’s that for a log line? Well, I guess it’s not really a log line because it doesn’t tell you what the movie is about. It’s more of a blurb.

But it’s a good one. If I were an Estonian filmmaker, I would plaster

“If you see only ONE Estonian horror musical this year, make it Chainsaws Were Singing!” — moviegique.com

all over my posters.

But hey, nobody asks me, and for good reason.

This…is a movie. No really. It is. And it’s a musical. And it’s a horror story, sorta, though more of a spoof of a horror story. (Side note: It would be extremely cool to do a serious horror movie musical, like that Polish mermaid horror musical from a few years back, but without running out of money.)

It begins with the Final Girl being captured by a chainsaw wielding maniac as her hapless boyfriend…actually, I’m not 100% sure where he was in that first scene. Chasing after them? Doesn’t matter much, the movie flashes back from there to earlier that day where the hapless hero is about to throw himself off a bridge after being shunned by his current girlfriend (or maybe crush, doesn’t matter).

The fishermen underneath tell him to find another spot and in the ensuing delay Tom spots Maria. They then have an amazing montage until Killer interrupts them and kidnaps Maria. Tom then goes on an adventure to save her, while Maria uses her wits to survive in the basement of the house where Tom lives with his psychotic mother, his incestuous twin cousins, and his sensitive painter younger brother. Oh, and a pre-toddler baby the twins have acquired.

The gay incestuous twins are a hoot. They’re about to retire from the murder-spree lifestyle to a cabin in Bratislava, which they continually wax upon. How it’s in the Alps…where you can smell the ocean breeze…and look out over the Eiffel Tower.

Killer’s name is literally “Killer”. It appears on his clothing, for example, and in flashbacks where we learn the horrible story of how he killed his father and now does his mother’s maniacal bidding. Of course, she killed the Father and blamed eight-year-old Killer for it which is both immediately apparent and the big reveal.

Along the way to rescue her, Tom meets with some very incompetent police, and a happy-go-lucky idiot named Pepe. There’s also a completely random, unexplained mysterious cult segment which…well, in the movie the characters say “What the the heck was that?” and “I don’t know, I guess we’ll have to watch the director’s cut.”

This is all done to music of course.

Peppy, upbeat music.

So we don’t really have a The Lure situation here. That movie had a darker torne and heavier music. I generally don’t like modern musicals because the production quality of music pulls me out of the story. My brain always knows the visuals don’t match the audio, but my heart is willng to believe if when the sounds seem more plausibly natural.

So where I favor of The Lure’s less “meta” approach, the music didn’t work for me while the happy music satire of this film did.

The whole thing is a what we used to call broad comedy. The Boy and I agreed it worked more than it didn’t, and it managed to be entertaining for a 113 minute runtime that only felt a little long. It’s additionally amusing if you’re familiar with the horror tropes it plays on.

The acting is—well, it’s appropriately comedic. Laura Niils is especially adorable as the world’s weirdest and best horror girlfriend.

And to cap off the oddity, the final scene where the sensitive younger brother flees on a motorcycle, grabbing the baby in a carrier as he drives by, is a direct lift from Raising Arizona.

I think we just have a situation where Estonian film lovers put together a wacky musical adventure. Lots of fun.