Patchwork (2017)

Recently I was browsing my watch list on Shudder and stumbled over Patchwork. I had added it to my queue a while ago and hadn’t gotten around to checking it out yet. I figured today was as good of a day as any other. Shudder you have hit another one out of the park.

A woman, or rather women, wake up after a night of partying. When I say they wake up their corpse returns from death. Just in case you think I goofed by not making corpse plural I didn’t. The three of them have had various parts sewed together and then were reanimated. The women involved are Jennifer, Ellie, and Madeline. Obviously, they are a bit confused and go looking for some answers. Along the way we see in a series of flashbacks what happened to them and how they all ended up in their current predicament.

Without giving too much away they are victims of a plastic surgeon who is so obsessed with perfection that he has taken to sewing parts together to make the best possible versions of people and animals. More on that last bit later in the review. The ladies eventually make their way back to his lab after some violent misadventures and demand that he fix them. Sadly, he has disposed of the unwanted parts, so they are sort of stuck together. There is another twist that I didn’t see coming before the final credits roll. One that I enjoyed the heck out of.

This is a good movie. Perhaps my expectations were low or maybe it was because I had no idea what I was getting into, but I had a blast with Patchwork. The movie has a Frankenhooker vibe as well as some thinly veiled Reanimator references, but they don’t dwell on them too much. Instead the filmmakers take the story in their own direction with wacky violent bloody results. The pacing is brisk, and the movie is always showing us interesting stuff on screen while slowly revealing the rest of the story. There is a twist at the end which explains everything, including how the women go from confused to gleefully violent so quickly. Patchwork grabs the audience’s attention and never lets us go. You can’t ask for more than that.

The special effects work is a lot of fun. The design of the assembled ladies is great. You can actually see each of the ladies in there, which is cool. We also get some funny gags including a sex scene where she loses a hand. There is also a bit with a finger being reattached with a stapler, someone gets beaten to death with their own leg, and a house full of douchebag frat boys gets what is coming to them. That isn’t even everything that is in the movie! Like I mentioned earlier this flick always has something fun on the screen. And the mad scientist guy doesn’t just work on people. This movie has one of my favorite lines of the year. “RELEASE THE OWL CAT!” Oh, hell yeah.

Clearly, I totally dug Patchwork and am going to recommend it. I also need to encourage you that if you aren’t currently a subscriber to Shudder you really should be. The service is always digging up fun independent movies like this as well as some great foreign genre flicks. If you like horror you need to support them. Okay back to the review. Check this one out it is worth your time.

© Copyright 2020 John Shatzer