More like rabid aunties, to be fair. Aging aunts Elizabeth and Victoria are throwing a grand celebration at their manor in honor of their birthdays. A large sum of family members soon congregate, including a married couple (Helen and Jon) and their children Suzy and Gilbert, another couple (Fred and Erika), a bellicose weapons dealer, a naïve young woman (Bertha), a young hotshot, a priest (Percival) and finally a lesbian couple. All come in hopes of collecting the spinsters’ wealth, and all are quite anxious for their death. Before the celebrations begin, however, a final gift is delivered by Christopher, the black sheep of the family. It seems that Christopher was something of a Satanist, and bestowed a bad name among the family. Once the gift (a modern Pandora’s box) is opened, the aunties soon morph into hideous creatures and a battle for survival ensues.

The resulting bulk of the film plays somewhere between a homage of Lamberto Bava’s DEMONS (1985) and a sanguinary gore spoof from the likes of Peter Jackson. The film is quite self-conscious of its farcical atmosphere, as the score (by Jean-Bruno Castelain and Pierre-Damien Castelain) is calculatedly pretentious (mostly mock classical music) and clashes well with the juvenile humor and, in the process, draws attention to the silliness inherent to the film. First time director Emmanuel Kervyn piggybacks the gore with laughs for a somewhat desirable result. A successful example of this distinctive style occurs during the first slaying of a guest at the dinner table. Aunty Elizabeth messily devours an unlucky guest’s head, leaving an unsightly headless cadaver on the table. The members gasp in horror, except for little Gilbert, who giddily screams "Smashing!"

Unfortunately, the humor often deflates many potential shocks. Most unfortunate of all, however, is the nature of the humor. It is simply too broad and silly to sustain the film’s momentum. Dialogue is often flat and the jokes are relegated to bathroom humor and the lowbrow. And since the film seesaws between gore and cheap giggles, there is little characterization (even for this genre’s standards) and the many scenes of petty squabbles between the survivors that break up the bloodshed just seem to be padding for the running time. Kervyn seems to have a hard time believing that the audience will have difficulty sympathizing with a cast of caricatures. Kervyn also fails more often than not to marry the laughs with the gore, and as a result the slayings aren’t nearly as ingenious (or fun) as that of, say, the EVIL DEAD series or Peter Jackson’s BRAINDEAD. And even though logic is understandably minimal in films such as this, a glaring blunder does come up: if the "rabid grannies" are so demonic and powerful beyond our imagining, why can’t they pry open the flimsy doors to attack the various guests?

The film does succeed on a few fronts, however. The most intriguing development in the film is Kervyn’s thinly veiled attack on the church. Kervyn (who also wrote the film) writes Percival as a selfish, cowardly, and entirely pathetic human being. Kervyn undoubtedly fashions another character, Jon, as his mouthpiece to speak his own views on the church. In one crucial scene, both Jon and Percival contemplate who should go outside and brave the wrath of the grannies. Percival flatly refuses and Jon irately proclaims "Can’t you do something? For centuries, you have burned innocents at your godforsaken stakes!" Kervyn continues to sling mud on the church by rendering any holy instruments (crosses, holy water) completely useless against the impeding grannies. The gore scenes also hold up considerably well, despite their lack of imagination. The transformation (quite reminiscent of DEMONS) of the Grannies from two sugary matriarchs to flesh tearing beasts is both gory, spectacular, and eyepopping. And despite Kervyn’s penchant for silliness, much of the gore is no laughing matter; children are messily hacked up (and they hack up their parents!), heads are blown off into gooey bits, and bodies are chewed in half.

The film’s rampant silliness and breezy attitude often makes light of these scenes, however. Kervyn ultimately paints his "splatstick" film into a corner by largely ignoring those very factors that make those films work, namely a non-stop flow of cruor and witty remarks. The outcome is a slapdash horror comedy that is alternately boring and thrilling.