Keyport residents are in for the night of their life, as a wronged spirit returns with a vengeance in Jacqueline Sophia London’s feature film Princess of the Murder, a horror slapstick so bad it’s good — guaranteed to bolster the community that made it and perhaps inspire cult status through midnight screenings in the near future.
Jackie (London) is a transgender woman living an ordinary life in Keyport, New Jersey. Being shunned and bullied everywhere she goes, from her nasty roommate Lynn (Lynn Spencer) to random strangers (Nick DeCarlo and Hannah Rager) who pelt eggs her way on the street. Jackie keeps to herself, reading Edgar Allan Poe with her pet crow, Cris. All seems mellow until Cris escapes, causing Jackie to pursue her friend through streets and graveyards, all while a malevolent spirit lies in wait to rise on the spookiest night of the year—one that threatens to cause chaos if unleashed.
At first glance, you might be tempted to write Princess of the Murder off—and perhaps you’d be justified in doing so. The filmmakers do the bare minimum as far as the editing, cinematography, and sound design go: the acting is wooden, dialogue fades into background noise, the color grading is horrendously executed, and the blocking can often look about as realistic as Cris the Raven’s PNG cutout sitting in a birdcage. It’s messy to say the least, and you can’t help but feel like a lot of what it’s trying to accomplish falls apart under its shoestring budget. But if you try to look past all the blatant technical errors, you’ll be left with a pretty outrageous little horror flick that falls squarely in the Z-movie category. It certainly checks no boxes in the logic department, but there’s some level of intention motivating its outrageous plot, which will at the very least leave you rolling with laughter.
From Jackie’s endless pursuit of her winged friend through city streets, to an untimely accident featuring a fake foam rock, Princess of the Murder throws the kind of deadpan, in-your-face humor that defined beloved classics like Airplane! or The Naked Gun. Sometimes it can be difficult to decipher what’s satire and what’s scripted, given how stiff some of the acting and dialogue can be in certain scenes, but it’s all part of the fun. Gags from clueless police detectives (with fake badges, of course), or friends Lucy (Luciana Kurzius) and Max (Max Ferreiras) walking aimlessly to a party that may or may not exist, and a boxing montage that goes on for a few agonizingly hilarious minutes courtesy of Rachel Kordell’s character Rachel, are constantly there to remind you not to take things too seriously.
As far as the actual horror goes, there’s enough fake blood and Scooby-Doo level brawls to keep the average fan entertained until the next joke rolls around.
Princess of the Murder is the kind of wacky horror feature that needs to be seen to be believed. Filmmaking takes a village, and Jacqueline Sophia London embodies that mentality with an uneven but endearing homage to spoof comedies and slasher horror.
