‘Mouse of Horrors’ Review: Better Than You Might Expect for a Steamboat Willie Slasher…

…but that bar has been set very low.

Magic Symbol: Thorn Rune
Mouse of Horrors was released digitally on January 25, 2025.

Table of Contents

What is Mouse of Horrors About?

Mouse of Horrors (2025)
The killer and the setting both look pretty good.

Mouse of Horrors takes broad advantage of public domain to make a slasher movie starring a killer in a black-and-white mouse mask.

The protagonist of the film is Chloe, a woman who will soon be traveling from her home in Wales to the United States. Her friends throw her a going away party at a fun fair that is closed to the public for the day. As they party into the night, they are stalked by a silent killer in a mouse mask who, along with a killer in a bear mask, has been instructed by a mad scientist to collect female body parts for a project he is working on.

Mouse of Horrors was directed by Brendan Petrizzo, and it was written by Harry Boxley and Marc Gottlieb. Lewis Santer plays the killer who is credited as “The Killer,” but who is referred to as The Mouse in the movie. Stephen Staley plays The Bear, and Chris Lines plays the scientist who made them into the killers they are today. Their main potential victims are played by Natasha Tosini, Allie Moreno, Erin Sanderson, Harry Giubileo, Rosie Edwards, Nichaela Farrell, Jake Watkins, and British indie horror scream queen Danielle Scott.

Mouse of Horrors Review

Mouse of Horrors (2025)
The lineup of potential victims are little more than just that, bodies to be killed, with the bare minimum of backstory needed to make the plot work.

Out of the two Steamboat-Willie-inspired slasher movies I’ve seen, Mouse of Horrors is the best so far (you can find my review of the other one elsewhere on this site). Does that mean it’s good? No. However, I did enjoy it for certain reasons. Unfortunately the bad parts are extremely bad.

Mouse of Horrors (2025)
This is one of the examples of CGI in Mouse of Horrors. It looks worse when you see it in live action.

Let’s get this out of the way first. The physical gore effects in the movie are good for a low-budget affair like this, but the CGI, when it’s used, is distractingly awful. I know I talk about practical effects and CGI a lot in reviews for movies like this, but there are good reasons for that. First is because it’s important to me, and I think it’s important to a lot of other horror fans as well. Second, I do it because the choice to use digital effects can have a gigantic impact on the perception and quality of a movie. The CGI used in Mouse of Horrors is unusually terrible even for a movie with a small budget, and it’s made worse by the fact that some of the physical effects are quite enjoyable.

I know it’s not practical or possible to do some things physically, but when a movie ends with a big digital effect that looks like it does in this movie, it can sour the experience. I still enjoy parts of Mouse of Horrors, but the ending (and a few other key CGI moments) knocked its entertainment value down considerably in my opinion.

Mouse of Horrors (2025)
Chris Lines is good as Dr. Rupert, but some of his villain speeches go on too long.

After the CGI, the sound is the next worst technical element in Mouse of Horrors. It’s hard to hear people at times, the timing is occasionally weird, there are moments when it cuts out entirely, and there is one shot where I’m pretty sure I heard the director talking. Sound has an enormous impact on horror movies, and if it’s not good, the negative effects are amplified.

Mouse of Horrors (2025)
Lewis Santer also played Tigger in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2.

But going back to the positives, yes, much of the practical gore is good, or at least entertaining. I also enjoyed the performance of Lewis Santer as The Mouse. His wordless joy in causing excessive pain and his extravagantly performative movements reminded me, at times, of Art the Clown. Just on a smaller scale. The Mouse’s visual design is also very well done. The mask is great, and his overall look is far beyond any other Steamboat Willie inspired killer I’ve seen in other released and yet-to-be-released movies.

Mouse of Horrors (2025)
The Bear uses the same style of mask as Pooh in the first Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, but that movie’s story is not related to Mouse of Horrors in any way.

The other villains are okay. The Bear is just there so we can see a fight between “Mickey” and “Winnie.” The mad scientist, Dr. Rupert is sort of interesting, but his inclusion in the story is maybe a bit too strange. He’s the person who “made” The Mouse and The Bear, and he’s planning to make “brides” for his two creations out of body parts from various women. I don’t think the Bride of Frankenstein plot thread was needed, and the time it takes to explain it is tedious. Plus, it’s that plot thread which leads to the awful CGI finale. If all of it had been excised, the movie would have been better.

Mouse of Horrors (2025)
The Mouse isn’t really a “mutated mouse” like the trailer says. As far as we’re ever shown, he’s a man in a mask. The mask even falls off at one point, though we don’t see his face clearly. He has been experimented on, but the exact nature of those experiments aren’t really explained beyond maybe being combined with parts of a mouse.

As for the group of friends/victims, they’re fine. The actors are good, but the characters they play are little more than meat for the slaughter. The story of having a party in a carnival reminded me of a lot of other fairly recent low-budget slashers, but it works just as well as anything as a setup for a series of bloody murders. And I think “fine” is a good descriptor for the movie as a whole. I had decent fun with most of it.

Mouse of Horrors Rating and Recommendation

Mouse of Horrors (2025)
Chloe’s party goes very wrong.

Star Rating: 2 out of 5

Mouse of Horrors delivers decent gore, and the main killer is highly entertaining. On the downside, the story has unnecessary plot lines, and it suffers from technical problems. It probably would have fared a little better if the CGI was cut out completely. It’s worth a watch on Tubi for people interested in keeping up with the public domain horror movies that have been coming out over the past few years.

Mouse of Horrors is currently streaming on transactional platforms including Fandango at Home, and it is available for free on Tubi.

Further Reading

Meet The Author

Chris has a degree in film studies at Temple University’s campus in Tokyo, Japan. He is a renowned expert on horror cinema.