Described as “Monty Python meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Les Miserables” Chainsaws Were Singing is a truly insane movie for absolutely deranged people. Luckily, that’s you and me, fellow weirdo. And if that’s not you, and you’ve found your way to this film review by some strange twist of fate, be warned: This ultra silly, heckin’ gory, and brilliantly dumb nightmare may just ruin normal movies for you forever! But if you are feeling brave, come take a walk on the wild side and have a gander at an absolutely bonkers Slapstick-Slasher-Musical.
It’s a little hard to give you a clear synopsis on what actually happens in the movie. I’ll sound like a madman, without some context. At its core, it’s about two young people, Tom & Maria (played by Karl-Joosep Ilves & Laura Niils) who fall in love at first sight, only to be ripped apart by a chainsaw-wielding maniac named “Killer” (Martin Ruus). It’s a real “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, other cannibal boy tries to meat girl” scenario.
“ultra silly, heckin’ gory, and brilliantly dumb […] an absolutely bonkers Slapstick-Slasher-Musical.”
From There, Tom tries desperately to rescue Maria, who finds herself Mono a Mono against Killer’s psychopathic hillbilly family of lunatics. But in and around all that standard issue slasher stuff, writer/director Sander Maran beams 100,000 volts of pure midnight madness from the movie screen straight into your frontal lobe. Which is apt, cause watching this movie can also feel like you’ve given yourself a lobotomy with power drill.
Chainsaws Were Singing is a full-on assault of gore gags and off-the-wall camera techniques, like a Troma movie directed by a Dead Alive era Peter Jackson. And amid brutal chainsaw attacks and general cannibal shenanigans, the characters all find time to sing their hearts out. It’s hard to understate just how nutters this dang movie is, to be honest. Lovers barf on each other! A Hiker is given a chainsaw enema! A cult of forest hermits sacrifice strangers to their mysterious God who lives inside a mini fridge! It’s all bad taste, and good good fun.
It’s easy to get bogged down or depressed at the state of the industry with a constant barrage of copy+paste blockbusters and mid-budget fodder but the independent spirit is alive and well in the misfits of Estonia. Cinema fans have been singing the praises of Hundreds of Beavers for months now, rightfully applauding it for its madcap, no-holds-barred originality-and although way gorier and certainly more offense, Chainsaws Were Singing is no different.
I can’t honestly say that I loved every second of the movie. In fact, there are scenes that I actively disliked. But this is cinema. This is art. This is also the place where you can see a man get his eyeballs and his testicals ripped out, only to have his testicals stuffed back into his empty eye sockets, but that’s beside the point…
Chainsaws Were Singing is a lo-fi masterpiece and a cult classic in the making. Is it the smartest movie of the year? Absolutely not! But it just might be the Citizen Kane of gory stupidity.
“a lo-fi masterpiece and a cult classic in the making […] the Citizen Kane of gory stupidity.”
Sander Maran’s Chainsaws Were Singing celebrated its International Premiere at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival. Click HERE to follow our continued coverage of the fest and let us know if you’re excited to see this exercise in absurdity over in the Nightmare on Film Street Discord!
