Screamboat Review

Screamboat is, for better and worse, the epitome of “Dumb Fun.” It’s leagues above the competition in the widening sea of public-domain Steamboat Willie horror parodies – though considering the moldy cheese of The Mouse Trap and I Heart Willie, that’s not really saying much. Director and co-writer Steven LaMorte and David Howard Thornton (Art the Clown himself!) somewhat redeem themselves after their previous collaboration, the abysmal Grinch slasher The Mean One – or perhaps their Mickey Mouse games are just benefiting from a relatively bigger budget. Either way, Screamboat is a victory by comparison. Just don’t go into it expecting anything more than a chintzy bonanza of brutality bogged down by ugly digital backdrops and lousy performances – at best, this is a midnight movie to laugh through with friends.

Thornton stars as LaMorte’s “Steamboat Willie,” looking less like his animated inspiration and more like the midpoint of an Animorphs cover illustration. (You know, where the CG transformation is in the awkward limbo between kid and beast?) The humanoid rat is a genetic experiment gone wrong, small enough to fit inside the headpiece of a costumed Times Square busker. His stalking ground is a Staten Island Ferry, though LaMorte isn’t engaging propellers and drifting around the Hudson River: The New York City skyline glimpsed in Screamboat is a digitally rendered postcard even the most gifted souvenir-shop salesman could never sell. His prey are passengers and crew members who can’t stop alluding to the history of the Walt Disney Company, a few of whom are at least disposed of in creative fashion.

Though Willie’s green-screened mouse-man proportions vary from scene to scene – and are sometimes represented by a raggedy puppet – the slasher violence of Screamboat’s practical effects shine. In its nastiest nautical demises, Willie skewers victims on harpoons, decapitates a captain with a wire, and severs a male member without mercy. LaMorte’s ode to ’80s schlock cinema is rough around every edge, but gorehounds should be pleased as Willie gnaws at flesh or impales patrons with forklifts. Thornton’s emotive giddiness is the icing on top, with Willie hop-skipping and tap-dancing from bloody corpse to bloody corpse.

The mini-Thornton earns laughs, but as in The Mean One, the actor is trading the malevolent menace of his Terrifier performances for more of a “man in a Halloween” costume vibe. Allison Pittel, meanwhile, fits the bill as Screamboat’s final girl: Selena, an artistic bartender who becomes the apple of Willie’s eye. But the performances elsewhere are more patchwork. Everyone else – including former MTV Teen Wolf Tyler Posey, appearing alongside his brother Jesse – is just playing a bunch of goofy caricatures. (Not Goofy caricatures – he’s under copyright until 2027 at the earliest.) Sometimes, that can be comical – like when boozed-up influencers compare their crosseyed, tongues-out “Ahegao” faces moments before dying at Willie’s hand – but it can also be uninspired. None of these characters has much to say; they’re just parroting New Yawk colloquialisms and trying to break the record for most Disney references in a single parody movie.

The (potentially lethal) drinking game writes itself: Take a sip whenever you hear a song lyric, quote, or movie title from the Mouse House’s back catalog. The aforementioned squad of ditzy, hammered online celebrities are all in princess cosplay, while Thornton does his best off-brand Mickey laughs. Imagine a Roger Corman production written by a Disney Adult: It’s overkill, but it’s also Screamboat’s eye-rollingly humorous charm.

But does it excuse jokes that land with an echoey thud and an overall quality ceiling that’s so low you’ll have to duck? Screamboat’s legacy will be its outrageous slayings at the hands of a fuzzy, shin-high killer, but for all its juicy practical kill effects, the visuals are markedly downgraded by constant greenscreen usage. LaMorte’s approach values entertainment over all else, but that makes for a piecemeal slasher that wanders aimlessly through a slippery metallic maze of pipes and staircases until Willie’s next attack. The film’s visual storytelling is sloppy, but Screamboat itself is sloppy, and never tries to convince you otherwise. It’s shoddily crafted, feels unfinished, and is too silly even for the unserious tone it establishes. If dumb fun is all you desire, then Screamboat might be your ticket to B-Movie paradise. If not, you’ll feel far, far away from the happiest place on Earth.