There are two completely different kinds of brutality afoot in movies like “Screamboat,” the latest in the low-budget horror movie craze to pervert beloved intellectual property the instant their 95-year copyright protection lapses into the public domain. First, there’s whatever sadistic fates the filmmakers have in mind for the characters, from being impaled by a forklift to having their faces plunged into the propeller of the Staten Island Ferry. But the real violence — and the reason audiences presumably pay to see these IP parasites — is what’s done to the characters themselves, as there’s an illicit thrill in desecrating powerful brands, like Disney.
“Screamboat” isn’t the first slasher movie to spoof “Steamboat Willie,” the 1928 animated short that introduced a primitive black-and-white version of Mickey Mouse, but it’s a lot more fun than last year’s “The Mouse Trap,” a pathetic cash grab in which some guy in a Mickey mask hacks up his buddies in a Chuck E. Cheese-style family entertainment center. Here, at least director Steven LaMorte (who skewered the Grinch character in holiday-themed “The Mean One” three years earlier) loosely tries to honor the spirit of Steamboat Willie, while poking fun at his parent company as much as his lawyers will allow.
Channeling the “splatstick” vibe of directors like Peter Jackson and Eli Roth with decidedly far-from-G-rated gags that include a severed penis and a headless Statue of Liberty mascot, LaMorte’s style is more overtly comedic than “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey” creator Scott Chambers’ relatively unimaginative takes on other Disney characters. Willie’s presented as a mangy rodent in big-button knickers and oversized shoes (played by “Terrifier” star David Howard Thornton under even more elaborate makeup than he wore as Art the Clown), manipulated to appear knee-high to his human victims.
The script, which LaMorte co-wrote with Matthew Garcia-Dunn, provides just enough backstory to explain how Willie came to be trapped in the bowels of the Staten Island Ferry. A drunken old-timer (Jarlath Conroy) describes the urban legend of “some kind of experiment abandoned in the cargo hold” while a rudimentary black-and-white cartoon flickers on screen (primitive enough to make “Steamboat Willie” look sophisticated by comparison). Released from captivity in the opening scene, Willie goes on a murderous rampage over the rest of the film, dancing and snickering after each of his shenanigans.
Even if LaMorte didn’t have copyright law on his side, he probably could have gotten away with passing this off as parody. That’s the spirit in which he introduces Cindi (Kailey Hyman), a blond-haired, blue-dressed birthday “princess,” and her insufferable besties, color-coded to match their monikers: yellow for Bella (Stephanie Bates), turquoise for Jazzy (Poonam Basu) and so on. The film introduces a boatload of other victims, including a variation on the “naked cowboy” of Times Square and someone dressed like Peter Pan, though it keeps only the loosest tabs on their whereabouts, such that a few disappear without even being dispatched.
Otherwise, trapping everybody aboard a boat is an inspired strategy for a demented Disney “ferry tale” in which romance seems to be blossoming between artsy Selena (Allison Pittel, who’s got an interesting look and real potential) and low-level crew member Pete (Jesse Posey, the less charismatic kid brother of “Teen Wolf” star Tyler Posey). Selena’s new to the Big Apple and thinking about moving back home, although if she can survive this hell ride, there’s nothing New York can throw at her she won’t be able to handle. Whereas Selena exudes ambition, Pete is inexplicably determined not to advance in his job — which is tricky, since Willie keeps killing his superiors, which means Pete’s bound to become captain eventually, if only by process of elimination.
The murders may be grisly, but they’re played almost entirely for laughs, as are the tossed-off references to any number of Disney movies. “Screamboat” is most taxing when it tries to be serious, testing the rest of the cast’s limited acting talents. For example, the best that can be said about Amy Schumacher, who plays Amber the on-board medic, is that she knows her lines, if not how to deliver them. In what must have been a favor to someone, Tyler Posey pops up, manning the radio in a few no-value-added scenes, including a mid-credits tease for a possible sequel.
Unnecessary as that may be, it still sounds less disrespectful to the original IP than so many of the Disney-sanctioned live-action reboots, and infinitely less boring than last month’s “Snow White.”
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