Movie Review: Menopause (2022)

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Written and directed by Joshua Nelson, Menopause is an indie horror film about, well, menopause.

Most of the story is centered on a sanctuary for abused women called the Sisterhood Sanctuary, where women are mostly talking about their periods and an upcoming solar eclipse event. There are a couple of other character settings happening at the same time, but they all revolve around the women having menopause, and they get increasingly more crazy as the film progresses.

Something having to do with the effect on the upcoming solar eclipse is messing with the women’s menstrual cycles and causing them all to start acting strange. They have fantasies about killing their significant others or just fantasies about killing whatever man happens to be near them. And the closer the event gets, the more out of control the women get. Soon enough, they are bloodthirsty. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s a husband or pizza guy. Anyone who is a man is in trouble.

What we liked:

  • This was a neat concept for a horror film. The solar eclipse having an effect on the women and making them all want to kill was fun.
  • There was a substantial amount of gore, and there were some inventive kill sequences.
  • The score was pretty good, and the cinematography was decent.

What we thought could have been better:

  • It seemed like there was too much character development that didn’t go anywhere. If it is going to be 2/3 of the film, there needs to be a reason to care about these characters. There was one example near the end, but not all of them needed that much time.
  • Most of the film was spent in the same couple of settings. There was a lot of potential for some interesting scenarios outside or at other locations that could have been visited.

Overall:

We thought that Menopause had a lot of promise, but there were some flaws in the execution. While this was definitely a step up from Nelson’s previous feature film, Triaphilia, there were still a lot of the same lingering issues with this film also having a lack of imaginative vision. Even with a small budget, a lot more could have been accomplished with this concept. We do think that Nelson is getting better, though, and hope he sticks with it.

Menopause releases tomorrow, February 22. You can check out the trailer below.