Golf is one of the worst of all possible sports, pointlessly wasteful of natural resources and harmful to the environment; country clubs, as a playground for the rich and powerful, deserve to be abolished outright. Slashers are one of the worst of all possible movie genres, not exactly being known for cleverness. For that matter the early 2000s weren't exactly a great time for cinema, as computer-generated imagery of the era was just advanced enough that everyone and their cousin wanted to make use of it, but not nearly good enough to have aged well thereafter; conceptions of music too often involved very tiresome, sterile pop and radio-friendly rock; and humor was defined by a lot of 'American pie'-like raunchiness and 'Dude, where's my car?' stoner bits, both of which are rather dull and have very limited appeal. Now put all these elements together into one supposed "horror-comedy,' and we have 2002's 'The greenskeeper.' I didn't have high expectations when I sat to watch, but for better and for worse I'll sit for almost anything. The opening scene seems kind of promising, and the film quickly gives us a large roster of awful, obnoxious, privileged white characters that we'll be glad to see sent off to the sand trap of eternity - but otherwise, in all earnestness, this swiftly grows tiresome.
Given that the whole bent here is far less than serious, I suppose it's only fair to wonder if it's not on purpose that everything is so over the top and kitschy, and so pointedly betrays the falseness of the presentation. Are filmmakers Kevin Greene, Adam Johnson, Tripp Norton, and Alex Wier making fun of all these tropes and ideas, or using them for lack of any other creativity, substance, or means? It's a fair question, I think, as our attention is caught in the wrong way by the dialogue, characters, scene writing, and narrative; the attempted humor, the tawdrily boorish and obnoxious sensibilities about sexuality and anatomy; the direction, too much of the acting, the rather bare-faced production values, and cinematography and editing that are only ever unremarkable or outrageous with no middle ground; plain art direction, overbearing music, and aspects of homophobia, racism, and classism. Then again, maybe it's not even a question that really matters, for whether all this is employed in jest or as a sincere expression of film-making, it's just not any fun. In one fashion or another some small moments come off better than others, but I definitely didn't laugh once in eighty-two minutes. I've seen the bottom of the barrel, and this isn't it, but there simply isn't any actual entertainment to be had here.
I guess the practical effects are well done, including blood and gore. The costume design, hair, and makeup are nice, such as they are. The root story in and of itself is decent, if truly nothing special. Despite the worst efforts of all involved, Melissa Ponzio turns in a performance that is fairly admirable. But is there anything else here that's baseline commendable? Is there anything about this that is meaningfully enjoyable? I don't think there is. If you're desperate for slasher fare, juvenile humor circa 2000, nudity, or "horror-comedy," then I guess you'll find what you're looking for. Yet what possible other reason would anyone have to watch this, especially since we could be watching literally anything else instead? What's really terrible is that the only reason I found this in the first place was because the 2018 'Ducktales' episode "The missing links of Moorshire!" was so outstanding that I found myself wondering about other horror or fantasy involving golf; finding this, in turn, feels like the classic notion of a genie granting a wish, but with awful, ironic consequences. There are much worse things one could watch, sure, but for as bland and pretty much outright boring as 'The greenskeeper' is, the distinction doesn't count for much. Check it out if you like, but I don't know why you would.
