In The Retaliators, revenge is a dish almost too messy to serve

If you take a gander at the evocative one sheet for Bridget Smith and Samuel Gonzalez Jr.’s The Retaliators and wonder what subgenre of horror the film is appropriating, the closest answer would be “all of them.” The movie is primarily a throwback to ’80s-era low-budget horror and splatter flicks where women exist mainly to be murdered and characters are dispatched in ways that the well-adjusted can only watch through spread fingers. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, as the existence of Sam Raimi, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven and many others irrefutably proves. The Retaliators, though, stumbles around in a confused, something-for-everyone netherworld where horror archetypes live in heavy metal music-laden disharmony. It traffics in themes of faith and redemption that the movie doesn’t buy any more than we do, and the story changes focus so many times in its first hour that we momentarily question who the movie is supposed to be about.

This wobbly build-up eventually resolves in a rip-roaring stretch of blood soaked, grand guignol insanity. Co-directors Samuel Gonzalez Jr., Bridget Smith, and Michael Lombardi can toss around the viscera in ways that would make their fanboy-approved influences nod in appreciation. They can also toss around subplots and characters with equal abandon, which is where the problems lie. Consequently, when they finally get down to gruesome business, even if audiences manage to ignore the perilous thematic ground upon which the film treads, this midnight movie bloodfest still proves to be a fatal victim of shaky storytelling.

Unless you’re The Exorcist or a handful of other horror films, making your main character a religious figure is just a cheap way to pretend that your movie is an exploration of faith in crisis. At best, it gives your lead a clear, if simplistic, arc to play, as it does with a pastor named John Bishop. Played by a game but less than commanding Michael Lombardi (FX’s Rescue Me), Bishop is the youthful and handsome creator of “world famous potato skins” and the protective father to a pair of young daughters. As befitting his profession, Bishop also knows how to turn a cheek, as when he backs down while confronting a bully (Kevin Smith company player Brian O’Halloran) at a Christmas tree lot.

The script, from brothers Darren and Jeff Geare, piques our interest early with touches that suggest Bishop will be our guide for a sly and gore-filled tour through a bygone era of genre cinema. After his older daughter, Sarah (Katie Kelly), name-checks Die Hard, Bishop responds with words he’ll soon want to take back, “Eighties action heroes solve problems with violence and one-liners. Real life doesn’t work that way.” These encouraging winks of humor give way to something more self-serious than we were initially promised, and more complicated than it needed to be. There’s a drug war brewing in town, one that arrives out of nowhere, is vaguely explained, and is then forgotten. However, it does lead to the introduction of the film’s most entertaining character, the vicious, hulking, and very bald Ram (Joseph Gatt). Clearly meant to recall Pluto (Michael Berryman) from 1977’s The Hills Have Eyes, Ram is so remorseless and indestructible that after he’s pepper sprayed by Sarah during a gas station encounter, he recovers immediately, then tracks her down and murders her. Later he announces his underworld supremacy with one of the least menacing lines ever uttered by a psychotic killer, “Now they know exactly who’s running this zip code.”