Chopping Mall – Film Review

Eight teenagers get trapped in a shopping centre after hours and three murderous security robots chase them.

There are insane movies, and then there’s Jim Wynorski’s Chopping Mall – a legitimately bizarre and downright hilarious techno-horror slasher that makes zero sense and will constantly have you shaking your head instead of cowering in fear like the movie desperately wants you to do.

The problem is that there is absolutely nothing scary about these strange robot-killing machines that we are shown in the film. They made weird noises and stab people sometimes and that’s about it. Maybe if you have an intense fear of robots, this film will be the stuff of nightmares for you, but to me, it was just comical.

Then there are the characters. They really aren’t even characters, to be completely honest. They just feel like people that mindlessly spew terrible dialogue and shoot at the robots. There’s no depth given to any of them. Honestly, every “character” here feels like the same person.

And what’s up with literally every guy in this film looking the same? Not only do they all have the same haircut, but they all have the same build, same clothes, and they always have to have the same type of girlfriend too. This movie’s casting department is quite strange it seems.

Of course, I must talk about the kills themselves. They’re outrageously bland. There’s nothing exciting about them whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I oftentimes found myself laughing hysterically at just how poorly executed they were. The fact that this film came out in the same decade as The Shining and A Nightmare on Elm Street is just insane to think about.

But to be honest, I’d be lying to you if I said that I didn’t enjoy watching this movie because I genuinely did. That’s not to say it’s a good movie, because it’s not. Far from it. But there’s certainly something endearing about this super strange killer robot slasher from the 80s that honestly feels like a dream. Seek it out and watch it, just to see how truly insane it is. You’ll be impressed, but not in the way the filmmaker wanted you to be.

Chopping Mall is an outrageously funny slasher about killer robots that features one of the most unintentionally hilarious scripts ever put to screen.