Pleasures of the Guilty Dead: Bikini Mayhem

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Bikini Mayhem

IMDb

All Ivy Winters wanted was to be a model. After meeting with a potential agent, it seemed like her career was finally on the right path. But she soon finds herself drugged and humiliated. With her life spiraling out of control, Ivy is on the fast track to destruction. When tragedy strikes, she quickly realizes it's time to enact bloody revenge on those who destroyed her dreams. It's time for a little...Bikini Mayhem!
- Written by Producers

Bikini Mayhem focuses on aspiring model Ivy Winters. She has left her hometown to pursue a career in modeling, which is taking her way out of her comfort zone. As the opening credits roll, you see her completely disgusted as she suffers through jobs that involve nudity and girl-on-girl action. As frustration in her career mounts, she also deals with pressure from her mother to return to school. Later on, in a moment of desperation, she goes on one last audition. This audition ends up being her first glimpse of success and things seem as if they will be turning around.

After her first photo shoot with the new agent, she gets invited to an industry party. This seems promising. According to the rest of the characters, these parties are every model’s way in to this highly competitive world. This party quickly blows up in her face, however, thrusting her into a world of drug dealing and get rich quick schemes. After being drugged, she soon realizes she was only being exploited to produce business for a shady drug dealer. As our heroine moves through her struggling career, she soon realizes that she cannot escape this drug dealer’s conspiracy. Soon this scheme puts her in a position in which she must fight back.

This is when the revenge aspect of the film comes into play. This is also where I thought I would develop a greater interest in the story. I, sadly, really never developed this interest. Before watching the film, I found myself intrigued by the storyline and the title. Here I was, half-way through the film and bored. There is eventually some violence and “mayhem”, the problem is, it comes in way too late. I’m a gore guy and the movie cover made me think this would be a blood drenched film. There was some decent gore, but it only occurred in a few quick kills. Then the movie just ends.

The acting also drove me completely nuts. The drug dealer, for instance, is the worst representation of the already irritating white-guy-with-a-grill character in film history. Up until this point, I thought I would give that award to James Franco in Spring Breakers. Sorry James, this guy just kicked your ass. He also has an insane accent that you cannot place and completely distracts you from anything he has to say. Sadly, the girls and minor characters aren’t much better. Although, Ivy’s friend does have a pretty memorable scene after she wakes up from being drugged.

On a more positive note, everyone involved seemed like they were having a pretty good time. Take the rap video for instance. It reminds you that the film really wants to have a tongue-in-cheek element to it. The rap video occurs when the protagonist is shopping around for jobs. At this point, you no longer know if her aspirations focus on becoming famous or feeding a growing drug habit. During the filming of this video, the viewer gets a hilarious and satirical view of the rap industry. It consists of one guy, our model, and a song entitled “Yo, Yo, Yo, Yo”. The songs lyrical content consists of the title and the phrase, “Big money, big booties”. I thought it was hilarious, and probably the high point of the film.