**Reader Beware – Possible Spoilers Ahead**

In September 2012 Scream Factory released their first two titles with Halloween II and Halloween III: Season of the Witch. From the outset Scream Factory’s plan was very clear – they would give classic horror films, most from the 80’s and earlier, proper DVD and Blu-ray releases. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say they’ve been a smashing success thus far. Not every release is great, but for the most part Scream Factory does stellar work and they’ve released a number of highly desirable films. In early 2015 Scream Factory partnered with ICF Midnight to start releasing more modern films, starting with The Babadook. This partnership with IFC has been great allowing Scream Factory to have a little more variety with their releases.

I give this very brief backstory on Scream Factory because they’ve taken the next step – they’re now producing original movies. Well, they’ve produced at least one in the form of the made-for-TV horror flick Fender Bender, coming to Chiller on Friday, June 3^rd. I was fortunate enough to see an advanced copy and I’m going to be up front with you – this movie is a ton of fun!

The press releases for Fender Bender set the bar really high:

Evocative of the horror-thriller classics of yesteryear, Fender Bender brings you back to a time when the boxes on the shelf at your local video store beckoned you with masked, knife-wielding maniacs and a twisted sense of morals.

Fortunately writer/director Mark Pavia more than delivered on that promise.

Fender Bender opens with a woman (Cassidy Freeman) home alone trying to relax by having a glass of wine and taking a nice bubble bath. As she attempts to wash the stress of the day away she receives a text message from an unknown number. This unknown person claims to be her “new friend.” After some back and forth we realize this is a person who earlier that day got into a little fender bender with the woman. This seems a little strange from the jump, but apparently this upstanding citizen just wants to check in and make sure she’s ok. She thanks him for checking and that seems to be that, but then he sends one more text message, “Enjoy your bubble bath.”

At this point this poor woman seems pretty freaked out and rightfully so. She quickly gets out of the tub and makes sure her home is locked and secured. Of course while she was in the tub it wasn’t secured, doors were left unlocked and windows left open. Once she determines everything is safe and sound, she climbs into bed. When she rolls over to get comfy she comes face to face with a leather clad man in an S&M mask. This is her new friend and this is trouble for her. The woman tries to escape to no avail and quickly meets her bloody demise at the hands of this masked lunatic.

A few days later in New Mexico Hilary (Makenzie Vega), a 17-year old high school student who recently got her driver’s license, is checking up on her boyfriend Erik (Kelsey Leos Montoya) who she suspects of cheating. Her suspicions turn out to be correct and after a quick confrontation she heads home heartbroken. At a stop sign another car hits her from behind. This isn’t a huge accident of course, but being a new driver, and using her mother’s new car, she immediately panics.

Hilary gets out of the car to exchange information with the other driver (Bill Sage).  Being such a new driver everything is fresh in Hilary’s mind about what to do in the situation. She writes down all the necessary information and is sure to take pictures of both vehicles and the other driver. She’s still extremely worried about what her parents will think, however. The driver of the other car attempts to calm her down, letting her know that mistakes happen. He also gets extremely creepy at a few points. He rubs her shoulder, which is odd because this man is in his 50’s and this is a high school girl. As if that isn’t creepy enough, he turns things up to a 11 by telling her she’s a virgin. An accident virgin of course. Hilary laughs it off a bit, remarking that maybe she should celebrate by getting a cake. Then the two part ways.

When Hilary gets home her parents are most definitely upset. A little too upset if you ask me. They really stick it to Hilary for the car accident which I think is a little unfair. She didn’t cause the accident, a guy rammed into her. In fact Hilary was quite responsible making sure to gather all the necessary information before leaving the scene. Despite Hilary doing the best she can to right the situation her parents decide to punish her by forcing her to stay home for the weekend, missing out on a trip the family had planned. We never know for sure where the family was headed but we know it was some type of show and Hilary had been looking forward to it all year.

With her parents now gone for the weekend, Hilary has the entire house to herself and tries her best to recover from her supremely shitty day. While relaxing in bed she gets a text from someone claiming to be her new friend. You guessed it, this is the creep that crashed into her. He goes through a similar routine that he did with the film’s first victim asking Hilary if she’s ok and if she got into much trouble with her parents. Their text convo goes on for a while with the creep driver mentioning at one point that it’s fortunate Hilary’s parents have a second car to take on their trip. Hilary questions this for a moment but comes to conclusion that she must have mentioned it to him when they first met and leaves it at that.

Hilary takes a shower and when she gets out she notices her phone is in a different spot from where she left it. She looks through her phone and finds that the pictures she took of the accident have been deleted and there’s now pictures of her in the shower. For some reason Hilary doesn’t seem all that concerned by this. I mean you can tell she’s a little worried and suspects that it could be the guy she got into an accident with, but she doesn’t go into a full blown panic which is what I would do. I guess her worry quickly disappears because a couple of her friends show up and she just assumes they were messing with her. So now everything must be fine, right? Nope, the driver soon shows up, in his sex costume, and Hilary and her friends are now in a fight for their lives.

I really, really liked Fender Bender. I think the goal was to harken back to the days of VHS horror and the film succeeds in that regard. This feels like something I would have watched when I was younger. It’s a very charming film and you can tell it’s made by someone who has a strong passion and love for slashers. With that said it does have some issues and really dumb moments. Let’s discuss those first.

First there’s the use of the text messaging. I get it. This is a modern film and everyone texts all the time. Making it a pretty big plot point is completely understandable. What I don’t really care for is how often we see the text messaging. There is definitely more texting in this than I’ve ever seen in anything else ever before. There’s like a 10 minute scene (I’m sure it’s less than 10 minutes but it felt like 10 minutes) of Hilary lying on her bed exchanging text messages with the man who crashed into her. This conversation is important, sure, but it probably could have been trimmed up some. Or at least have Hilary doing other things around the house while texting. Just watching her on the bed texting is boring.

The next part that really bothered me was Hilary’s interactions with her parents. I touched on this a bit up above, but I’d like to expand on it some more. Again, I don’t think they should have been so hard on her for the accident. It wasn’t her fault at all and she was very responsible in getting the proper information from the man who crashed into her. Then there’s her punishment of not allowing her to go on this trip to see this show or whatever it is. Why didn’t they tell us what this show is? Hilary obviously wanted to go very badly. She’s balling when her parents tell her she can’t go. The problem is we don’t know where it is she wanted to go, so it’s kind of hard to understand why she’s so upset. Another part of her punishment is that she has to call the insurance company and get everything taken care of. She’s 17-years old! I understand she was driving the car at the time of the accident and she needs to learn responsibility but should she really be the one dealing with the insurance company? I understand her being involved in the process, but I feel like that shouldn’t be her sole responsibility.

The one other thing that really got to me was the way Hilary and her parents talk to one another. They basically talk to each other in Spanglish, but it isn’t that flowing Spanglish where they go from English to Spanish and back again effortlessly. They talk in English exclusively and then randomly throw in one Spanish word. The movie takes place in New Mexcio and maybe that’s a New Mexico thing. I’m from Arizona, another southwestern state with a heavy bilingual population. I’m very familiar with families that speak in both languages, I just don’t know any that do it in this weird way.

Now, let’s talk about the good stuff!

Fender Bender is a home invasion slasher, but it’s also a made-for-TV movie. Slashers are typically pretty violent. Given the made-for-TV aspect I didn’t expect this to be that violent, but it actually is. There’s not a ton of violence and gore, but what is there is fairly extreme and quite well done. There’s one scene in particular where someone gets it to the throat and it’s super bloody. I mean blood spraying everywhere. It’s amazing.

While the gore is nice and fun, Fender Bender is able to generate some serious scares with the tension and suspense it builds. We know who the killer is right off the bat, so there isn’t a lot of suspense in determining who he is, but there’s plenty of suspense waiting for him to strike. In my opinion home invasion flicks are inherently scary because that’s someone entering your home, your safe haven. The fact that we know someone is going to be attacked by a lunatic killer in there home is scary. Fender Bender does a wonderful job meticulously building up towards the killer’s reveal inside Hilary’s house. It keeps you on pins and needles throughout, just waiting for him to strike.

The killer’s costume is fantastic. All the legendary slashers like Freddy and Michael and Jason have a very specific look. The killer in Fender Bender does as well and it looks great. I joke about it having an S&M quality, which it does, but it still looks cool and scary. I could be wrong, but I have to think the look is inspired by David Carradine’s Frankenstein in Death Race 2000. It’s almost like Carradine with a steam punk twist (because of the goggles) and then like a dash of 80’s movie thug. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a good look that I approve.

While I was watching the movie I found it fun to picture this killer as like the brother or maybe the cousin of Stuntman Mike from Deathproof. Whereas Stuntman Mike got off on using his car as a murderous weapon, the driver uses his car as the instrument that will allow him to get access to the homes of his would-be victims. So not the same MO exactly, but they’re kind of playing in the same ballpark.

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come from Scream Factory. I’m all for them diving more into the world of producing their own feature films. If they’re going to be as good as this one, we should want more. When Fender Bender airs on Chiller I hope tons of people tune in. It’s a scary, suspenseful slasher that will make you think twice about how you interact with your fellow drivers on the road.

Fender Bender will premiere Friday, June 3 at 9 PM ET on Chiller.