by Linda Kay

Starring: Tonic

Directed by: Eli Roth

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Another holiday gets the horror treatment in this gruesome slasher film in which an unknown killer wearing a pilgrim mask targets the people of Plymouth, Massachusetts whom he feels were responsible for a Black Friday sales crush that killed several people.

Cat Burglar (Scene Stealer): Somewhat early in the film the killer targets Manny (Tim Dillon), one of the security guards working the store the night of the stampede. Manny gets the idea he may be next and is packing hurriedly in his home, telling his pet brown Maine Coon cat Dewey that he will be gone for a while but that someone will come to feed him.

Dewey sits on his cat tree watching Manny look around the apartment for his passport which he had placed on the coffee table just moments before.

Manny goes into the bedroom to look around and when he comes out a pilgrim mask is on his couch. Dewey has moved to the kitchen counter.

Manny picks up a bat and looks to Dewey, asking the cat for the whereabouts of the killer. Dewey looks to the other side of the doorway as if indicating that is where someone is hiding. Unfortunately the killer is not in the kitchen and Manny gets an electic carving knife to the stomach before having his head cut off.

As the killer is leaving, he pauses when noticing Dewey sitting by his empty food bowl.

The killer gives Dewey a scritch on the head and leaves him a massive amount of food which the cat starts to chomp down on (and actually begins to regurgitate as the scene comes to an end!)

The cat throwing up was even used in the animated photo section of the end credits.

The cat actor playing Dewey was Tonic, the same cat who shared the role of Church in the remake of Pet Sematary and more recently co-starred in the film Caught Stealing. Tonic’s trainer is Melissa Millett of The Ultimutts.

Director Eli Roth was so impressed with Tonic’s performance he nicknamed the kitty “Leonardo DiCaprio.” The film also gave Roth the chance to fix an annoying trope in horror films in which dogs, cats and other pets are killed or left abandoned during the course of the film with no concern about what happens to them. Just once he wanted to see the pet taken care of by the killer, a fact which we wholly appreciate.

Final Mewsings: Maybe Tonic has a weak stomach when it comes to gory horror movies.

Many thanks to T.j. Dotson for letting us know about the cat in this film.

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