Karen: Beauty Queen Butchery is EXACTLY what you think it would be.
Karen The Beauty Queen Butcher Might Be the Best Worst Movie You See in 2026
Wicked Horror is probably the only publication that will give Karen: the beauty queen butcher a positive opinion. Damn we could be the only publication that doesn’t consider it to be totally irredeemable garbage of AI, by the way. And we are proud of it; we love it or we hate it, Really independent horror productions like this deserve a few a kind of recognition, and even a little a bit of admiration for trying when “success” was never really an option in the first place.
Now I’m not saying that Karen: the beauty queen butcher is necessarily a “good” film. But it’s certainly an above average film, and one that has been WAYYYYY better than I thought. My expectations for this movie were so low that ants were tripping over them – so imagine my surprise when I found myself LOVING what I was watching here.
Karen: the beauty queen butcher comes to us from director Zachary Snygg. It doesn’t sound like a real name, but it probably is. If you’re a guy who makes movies with titles like Mad Maxine: The Dashing Road And Beaster Day: Meet Peter Cottonhell to make a living, “Snygg” is pretty much the perfect last name. I’m sure you could pronounce it 100 different ways and it would still sound wrong 100 times.
Of course, Snygg has been in the independent film game since decades NOW. As in, his directorial work dates back to the end 1980salthough for most of his career he used a multitude of pseudonyms, including Z. Winston Brown and John Bacchus. Frankenthug, Kinky Kong, Who Wants to Be an Erotic Millionaire, Girl Explores Girl: The Alien Encounter… all his work, in one capacity or another. And even if you never did seen whatever Snygg directed, you’ve probably heard of at least one of his films before, if only because it’s a lock for all those lazy “worst movie titles of all time” lists – those from 1989 The bloody horror video that made me vomit on my Aunt Gertrude.
By sheer luck, I managed to come across Snygg’s. last movie — 2024 The cigarette – a year or two ago. I actually quite liked it; it’s a movie about a woman who unwittingly causes Armageddon in New York by handing out a bunch of senseless, dusty cigarettes to random people outside basketball courts and skateparks. Fittingly, the star of this film – the inimitable Jasmin Flores – is also the titular Karen of Karen: The beauty queen’s butcher shop. And it only takes about five minutes for this movie to firmly stands out as a manic, blood-splattering slasher comedy, complete with absurdly gory special effects that don’t even make a splash. to try look realistic and believable most of the time. Imagine Tom Savini Directing Live Action Itching and scratching movie and it would probably look A LOT like Karen: the beauty queen butcher.
Flores was rather born being a no-budget horror movie queen. She looks like a Kardashian version of Felissa Rose and her accent is absolutely indescribable. Like, it’s a combination of each a single Latin American country and each one Eastern European country at a time. If all the Planeters of Captain Planet were merged into one character, I guess it would sound a lot like Flores’ actual voice.
Now you could have some hypotheses about Karen: the beauty queen butcher based solely on the title. And yes, most of these assumptions would be completely accurate. But there is actually a few superficial political and social commentary takes place here. Concrete example? The main character’s last name is “Mangione,” and you better believe that becomes a talk point at different points in the film.
This might surprise you, but a movie called The beauty queen’s butchery it is indeed about beauty queens who are massacred. Or more precisely, beauty queen competitorsbut now we’re just picking nits. One of the great creative choices of the film is that it doesn’t playing the guessing game for a very long time. Indeed, we discover quite early on and without revealing who the crazy slasher of the film is. too much of history, let’s just say we have more than one or two major twists and turns in the story. Well, calling them “major” is probably too much, but at least they try to make things happen here.
The overall cast is pretty weird but Above all effective. Since most of them are meant to be sliced and diced, I suppose you can forgive the film for keeping the characterizations fairly superficial and one-dimensional. This is the kind of movie where a woman’s taste in eyeliner becomes their main personality trait – it’s not that important in the long run, since 95 percent of actors leave the film in pieces. But we get some relatively solid performances here, notably from Scott Bolger as Karen. incredibly forgiving husband. As soon as he starts reading The Vagina MonologuesBut you know a little the inevitable is inevitable.
The controversial thing about this film has to be its gratuitous use of AI filler. And yes, this movie uses A LOT of AI backgrounds, which are almost immediately identifiable as ChatGPT-generated glops as soon as they appear on screen. I’m not 100 percent sure that some of the background acting and even some of the gore effects were also AI, but it would be explain the comical and physics-defying surreality of certain scenes. I’m not going to moralize too much about the use of artificial intelligence in films, especially negative budget movies like this – but it’s quite conspicuous and distracting. Like, unconsciously you come sense that something is wrong and if it’s instantly recognizable in a multi-million dollar ad, it’s certainly it’s going to be obvious in a movie This produced at a lower cost.
Despite some reluctance, I always I found myself enjoying Karen: The beauty queen butcher. This is not a film that claims to be high art, nor even poor art. It’s a film that somehow exists seems like it would be one of the worst things you’ve ever seen in your life, but when it’s all over you’re like “Well, that might actually be moderately above average for what it is.
And yes, that East a compliment, as roundabout as it may seem.
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