To start, this movie has a very low budget (and it seems it was filmed in Canada with Canadian actors). Many of the actors have this movie to their credit and little else. The director does not have a Wikipedia page. So there are flaws (especially the acting). However, with that, the direction wasn't too bad, and the movie looks like it was shot on lower-end digital, but the cinematography is OK.

The movie is weird in that it's primarily a psychological horror movie, as there isn't much gore in the main movie. It's set in the past, with a dysfunctional family and 2 brothers having issues. The older brother, other than being a serial killer, flunked out of high school and works a dead-end factory job while paying rent to stay at his parent's house. The younger brother is bullied and only has one friend. Both enjoy horror movies.

I say no gore in the "main" movie, b/c there is a "movie within a movie" element with a movie titled "Headless", which was stolen from the movie store. The younger brother gets a copy and he watches it with his one friend, and THAT movie is gorey and sadistic as all frick (and has its own IMDB page, and was supposed to have an actual spinoff made but I think it never materialized).

This is not a happy ending movie for sure, and the final shot is the one gory shot in the "main" movie. The movie sets up the tension pretty well, and the climax is sad and unsettling. It has many effective scenes throughout of that teen angst (to the point of anger) mixed in with social isolation, with a few impactful scary-tense scenes.

The movie is set in the 1990s, and you know this because of all of the homages to horror from that period. There is a poster for the movie Popcorn, they watch horror movies on VHS, the older brother has a Venom/black metal poster, and the holder brother has a replica Necronomicon (Evil Dead version, I believe). The nostalgia is done pretty well, especially considering the budget.

Now, other than the issues with its budget (Again, the acting is not good), the character development and explanation of the violence is very lacking. This movie is based almost directly off a book of the same name, and from what I read, the book has the same issues. The "why" of the older brother, both internally and externally, just wasn't good. At least with the younger brother we see his bullying, social isolation, and conflict with the parents. Because the movie literally starts telling you the older brother is a serial killer, it makes him more mysterious and menacing from the get-go, which makes his character lacking.

This is a movie that could be remade with a bigger budget and more creative director that ignores some of the character explanations from the novel. The skeleton for a really good story/movie (or, hell, even book) is there, but it need some refinement in the characters. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're making a psychological horror movie, you need rich characters to make it work.