‘Tooth Fairy: Drill to Kill’ Review

Stars: Paula Coiz, Samantha Cull, Patricia Mañas, Danielle Scott, Chris Cordell, Kate Sandison, Bao Tieu, Samantha Cull, Meg Matthews, Zuza Tehanu | Written by Ben Daly | Directed by Louisa Warren

Seemingly filmed back-to-back with the fourth film in the series, a film that rebooted the franchise, redesigned the titular killer tooth fairy and changed all the lore we’d previously learnt, Tooth Fairy: Drill to Kill is set two years after the horrifying events of THAT school trip where students and teachers were brutally slain and follows Sammy, the surviving teacher, who rejoins her colleagues back at work. However, after hearing some odd noises around the classrooms Sammy feels she is being watched. It’s not until she hears the familiar knocking at the door does she realize her nightmare has not ended.

I’ll be honest, after sitting through the fourth film in the franchise, Queen of Pain, I wasn’t holding out much hope for this follow-up. You see, until the fourth film, the Tooth Fairy franchise had – remarkably – been improving film on film! But the last film was a major step down from the third movie, which hit the right notes of scares and gore (the gore being a true highlight), looking like the production had major budget cuts and thus felt like a step backwards. So with the fifth film filmed at the same time, and no doubt sharing resources, I couldn’t help but think we’d be in for more of the [low budget] same this time round.

I was also hoping that this fifth film might answer some of the questions that were left unanswered in the fourth film, Tooth Fairy: Queen of Pain… mainly why the hell no one seems to reference the OTHER tooth fairy (because the fourth film totally rewrote the origin of our titular killer) or if these two new films are bear ANY relation to the first three films in the series!

My hopes, unfortunately, were totally dashed by Tooth Fairy: Drill to Kill – which should’ve really been expected given its penned by Ben Daly, who also wrote part four – as this film does exactly what its predecessor does, provide little by way of plot or explanation! Instead we get the tooth fairy – still an apparently escaped mental patient NOT a supernatural entity – tracking down Sammy (a returning Paula Coiz) and offing her before moving on to more victims; including Sammy’s sister! And yes, if you’re a slasher movie fan like me you’ll realise that story beat (the survivor of the previous film being killed off in the first 20 minutes of the next film) has been lifted whole-heartedly from other classic slasher movie franchises. Personally it reminded me of the death of Ginny from Friday the 13th Part 2 in the opening of the third film!

The other three-quarters of Tooth Fairy: Drill to Kill (though the on-screen title on the version I saw was called Tooth Fairy 5: Premolars?!) follow Sammy’s sister Meg and more teachers who are offed one-by-one by our killer tooth fairy – without rhyme or reason outside of the characters apparent hatred of school teachers?! Yes, you did read that right… Our killer keeps ranting on about school teachers and things they do wrong as she kills. What the actual f*ck does any of that have to do with a tooth fairy you might ask? I’d like to know too! And why the hell does one character literally talk to the psycho killer when she looks like she’s wearing the skin of someone else on her face?! None of it makes any sense… even for this franchise!

A prime example of taking a franchise character to a ridiculously literal extreme – turns out all this killer wants is teeth and nothing more than teeth (apparently, as that’s all we’re told by this film) – Tooth Dairy: Drill to Kill should be the proverbial nail in the coffin, nay mouth, of this horror series. Especially considering by the time this film ends what once was a supernatural killer (in the first three movies) turns into a home invader with a gun… yes, a gun! FFS, way to totally RUIN a franchise! Unless that was the point? Screw up the character so much that the distributor doesn’t ask for more in the series?! I’d like to think that’s a more plausible explanation than the people behind this film being so incompetent that they f*cked this up franchise all on their own!

* 1/5

Tooth Fairy: Drill to Kill is available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime now; or you can stream it for free (with a TON of ads) on the V Horror YouTube channel.