A killer is on the loose in the LGBTQ+ comedy, horror, and drama film by UK director Richard Fysh entitled 7 Kills, 3 Songs, & a Banana.
Having first come to the screens in the 60s with Peeping Tom and Hitchcock’s Psycho, slasher movies have had an amazing run in every decade since. From the Italian Giallos, to A Nightmare on Elms Street, Halloween, then 90s success with Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, it seems that horror and slasher films will always find an audience. Hell, even this year we got to see Eli Roth create a nod to the aforementioned classics with Thanksgiving.
Now, UK director Richard Fysh throws his name into the hat with the completely independent feature 7 Kills, 3 Song, & a Banana. According to the website, the whole film was made for a paltry $3,000, which is incredible in this day and age.
Opening with a scene in a living room, Rachel (Charleston Harvey) and Steve (Mark Bogumil) are getting cozy, deciding how to spend their time together. Rachel then leaves the house and gets in her car, not realising in time that there is someone in the back seat waiting for her. After killing her, the cloaked killer transfers her body to his car and then throws the corpse into what looks like a lake.
With the death of Rachel, her family and friends, including ex-girlfriend Amber (Alexandria Romanov) try to come to terms with what has happened, and try and figure out who the killer is. While all this is happening, we have other scenes that include Steve getting together with another girl named Jill (Madisen Zabawa) and Amber having to deal with a stalker due to her attracting the crazies with her side hustle on OnlyFans.
As we have stated on numerous occasions, film-making is extremely difficult, but making great films is even more so. Making a good film with little to no budget is a massive task, but it is achievable if all the fundamentals are in place. Good cinematography, a good script, a good director, and good actors. Unfortunately, 7 Kills, 3 Songs, & a Banana fails with many of the basic elements that make up a film.
In “7 Kills,” dialogue-driven exchanges dominate the narrative landscape, unfolding in diverse locales ranging from mundane living rooms to bustling cafes and bars, occasionally punctuated by bursts of action. However, this heavy reliance on verbal interaction often overshadows other elements, relegating pivotal scenes to mere background noise. Moreover, the film’s cinematography suffers from a lack of depth and ingenuity, characterized by uninspired lighting arrangements and sporadic lapses in focus, diminishing its visual impact. An example of this is seen when the bartender in a bar scene is in sharp focus while the main character, Amber, remains soft and out of focus, detracting from the intended visual hierarchy. With more meticulous attention to detail, these technical deficiencies could have been rectified to yield a more visually arresting presentation.
From a critical standpoint, the screenplay displays amateurish tendencies, evident in its inclusion of scenes devoid of substance, implausible dialogues, and numerous plot holes. One glaring example arises when Gloria, Rachel’s mother, instructs Amber to identify Rachel’s body—a task typically conducted in controlled environments such as morgues or police stations. Instead, they opt for an inexplicable beachside inspection, defying logic and narrative coherence. This glaring oversight underscores the film’s narrative inconsistencies and detracts from its overall credibility. Furthermore, the absence of authorities at the beach scene leaves Rachel’s body unattended, and accessible to anyone passing by, further exacerbating the film’s lapses in logic and realism. Additionally, the inclusion of musical interludes, while presumably intended to add depth, instead disrupts the film’s tonal cohesion, straying from the intended genre of a slasher film. In essence, “7 Kills” falls short of delivering the requisite tension and coherence expected of the genre, with sporadic moments of suspense overshadowed by technical flaws and narrative missteps.
I have to commend everyone for having the drive to get up and complete a full-feature film. It’s difficult, but more care needs to be taken if you want to forge a career in the business. If more time was spent in the pre-production stage, planning shots, and reworking the script until it was exciting, then we would have had a completely different movie here. A better one. Having no money isn’t an excuse for many of the film’s problems. There is potential here, but more work is needed.
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