The Weird Kidz: Just So Off-Putting

Summary via Chattanooga Film Festival:

THE WEIRD KIDZ is a horror-inflected creature feature and an ode to ’80s coming-of-age films and favorite late night cinema tales. When three pre-teen boys and an older brother and his girlfriend take off for a weekend campout, none of them could imagine the horrors (and laughs) awaiting them in a remote desert inhabited by a legendary night creature and crazed townfolk. Puberty and adventure await…along with terror, amputations and midnight cult rituals!

Review:

The Weird Kidz is a wannabe 2D animated Stranger Things. It tries to amp things up a bit by adding Beavis and Butt-head sex, bad language and more graphic violence, but it is still a pretty unimaginative copy. They’ll have to do better than giving the audience giant ants and ritual community sacrifice.

It tries to duplicate the kind of latchkey adventures the past generation of teens now adult grew up on, a kind of pre cell phone era heaven but not without traumas and fears lurking in the background. It’s the family we want finding itself in adversity but never riding above the horror stereotypes. Simply, a case of familiarity breeding too much contempt in the audience— been there, done that, big deal.

The hand drawn animation, supposedly a homage to the Scooby-Doo Hannah-Barbera era, herky-jerks to the point of distraction, making it hard to get involved in the story or take the characters beyond flat stereotypes. Even the giant ant design seems weirdly off. Nothing really ever comes together visually or tonally. The Kidz are not the only weird thing happening here.