- Directed by Elza Kephart
- Written by Patricia Gomez
- Stars: Romane Denis, Brett Donhue, Sehar Bhojani
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/2VgewtP
Synopsis
There are people picking cotton in India. One of the “pickers” goes into the experimental field for the Canadian Cotton Clothiers. Credits roll.
We start at CCC, a trendy clothing shop. Libby starts her first day at work, and she’s really excited. Craig is the manager, and Shruti has been working there far too long. Libby’s told to replace all her clothes and to hurry up, as Harold is coming this evening. Everyone is a fairly stereotypical retail fashion worker. Libby takes her new clothes and hides in the bathroom to change while two other employees come in. One of them, Jemma, puts on a new pair of jeans she just stole which almost immediately starts causing pain for her. She thinks it’s cramps. It’s not cramps. Jenna goes into the restroom to loosen her pants, but they cut her in half instead. Then the pants crawl around and suck up all the blood.
Meanwhile, out in the showroom, Harold explains that the new SuperShaper jeans are ready for release. They’re special, unisex pants made from a new strain of Indian cotton. The store’s about to go into total lockdown before the store opens in the morning. Hunter goes looking for Jenna and finds her pants hanging on a hook in the restroom. She tries them on as well but doesn’t last even as long as Jemma.
Craig finally sends Libby off to find his two missing workers. Meanwhile, the pants just crawl around and lurk in the dark. She shows the bodies to Craig, who explains that they can’t call the police because they’re in lockdown. Craig thinks she killed herself, but Libby thinks there might be a killer. He offers her several new employee perks to keep quiet and be a team player.
Lord, another employee gets his arm ripped off by the vicious blue jeans. Each time the pants kill someone, one of the little spots in the logo turns red— it’s keeping score. Craig finds Lord’s head in a packing box. Libby sees it, and Craig explains, “It’s just a mannequin!” Then he whacks her over the head and locks her in a closet.
The lockdown is lifted just for a few seconds to let in Payton Jules, the famous vlogger. She’s been waiting for the SuperShapers for her entire life. She starts her broadcast, and the pants choke her to death right on camera. Then the pants get up in front of everyone and attack!
Craig comes into the empty showroom and watches the jeans licking up the blood. Barb tells him he’s a worthless little man who will never make regional manager, so he sends her out to where the pants are prowling.
The pants stalk up behind Shruti, who is humming some Indian tune, and the pants start dancing a Bollywood number. She goes on break, and the pants find an upper-body mannequin to wear. Libby and Shruti team up, but Libby is wary of Craig’s treachery. Craig says it’s all a mass hallucination. They lure it out by playing Bollywood music on the PA system. She tries to talk to it, but it doesn’t understand. Shruti speaks Hindi, so maybe she should try. It writes on the wall that it wants Keerat from India, the girl who fell into the cotton separating machine and died. The pants seem to be possessed by Keerat’s ghost.
Libby gets really upset when she finds out the jeans are made from GMOs and not organic cotton. Then there’s the child labor question since Keerat was only 13 when she died on the job. Maybe CCC is more hype than help. Wait— there are 175 pairs of those jeans here; what if more of them are alive? They are, and they’re feeding on the corpses of the former CCC employees.
Craig, on the other hand, may be more deadly than an army of undead blue jeans…
Commentary
This was clearly a satire of how important everyone takes the fashion industry, how people take their nonsense jobs too seriously, and of modern life and consumerism in general. The acting is an over-the-top parody, and it’s obvious that no one took this film seriously in any way. I mean, who would possibly care that their clothing came from GMO cotton?
The special effects with the crawling pants are not excessive but well done. Killer pants are hard to take seriously, but it gets more and more serious as the film progresses. It’s really a little too silly; it’s like an extended episode of Creepshow or something like that.
Oh, and there is an after-credit scene.