My quick rating – 1.3/10. I chose Bikini Guillotine for two reasons: the title, and the merciful 65-minute runtime. Both turned out to be lies. One promised lunacy, the other promised restraint. What I got instead was a sunburnt fever dream that feels longer than Killers Of The Flower Moon and about as sharp as a pool noodle.
The film opens exactly how you’d expect: five college girls in bikinis announcing, repeatedly, that they’re ready to have fun. And just in case you missed it the first time, don’t worry, because the movie will replay the same scene again. And again. It’s less “creative repetition” and more “someone hit pause, told the actresses to reset, and then forgot to edit out the bad takes.” This happens three times in the first five minutes, which is honestly impressive in the way watching a car roll slowly into a lake is impressive.
Enter Dave, whose sole purpose is to warn the girls about an escaped lunatic nearby. Naturally, no one listens, because that would shorten the runtime to a responsible 20 minutes. Dave immediately finds the killer anyway, in a completely non-graphic encounter that somehow manages to be both pointless and confusing. This sets the tone: nothing matters, nothing connects, and consequences are optional.
The sound quality is atrocious. Outdoor shots rely entirely on what I can only assume is a phone microphone buried under a towel. Entire chunks of dialogue are completely unintelligible, which is probably for the best, because the filmmaker often doesn’t seem to realize when the audio cuts out altogether. If the dialogue was important, that’s unfortunate. If it wasn’t, then why record it at all?
Visually, the movie commits crimes against basic filmmaking. You can see the camera operator’s shadow by the pool. Shortly after I typed that note, you can literally see the phone in the shot. Randomly, the “pervert with a camera phone” will just get stuck filming someone’s chest or a stray leg, like the autofocus gave up and went home. The Solo cups also appear to be empty, which somehow feels appropriate.
Now, let me address the guillotine. The killer wields what looks like a plastic, black, flying ring draped with fake bait worms. This is repeatedly slashed at a victim with zero blood, zero impact, and an impressive close-up that proudly highlights the lack of gore. Despite this, people are apparently dead. How? No idea. My theory is secondhand embarrassment.
The killer may also possess mind control, because two girls are taken, possibly killed, possibly hypnotized, and then, in the next pool scene, four girls are hanging out like nothing happened. Keep in mind, there are five chicks at this “party.” Violence against women? None. Blood? Absolutely not. Another horror with no horror, suspense, or talent. (Again, sparing everyone’s names except the peeping tom, Jamie Grefe)
By the time the Cinema Epoch logo popped up, everything made sense. I’d recently suffered through Blood Rush, another bikini “slasher” without the slasher, and this feels cut from the same soggy cloth. Jamie Grefe clearly doesn’t know what a guillotine is. Or how murder works. Or what editing is.
Bikini Guillotine isn’t just bad, it’s baffling. A masterclass in how to waste time, digital storage, and human effort. That 1.3 rating? That’s for the title doing all the work.
