Hear Me Out: Public Domain Slashers Are A Recession Indicator

Welcome back to “Hear Me Out,” a weekly series of absolutely correct movie opinions for your next watch. We’re in our recession era, so thank all the gods for free streaming platforms.

There are some movies whose premise says everything. We all knew what we were getting into when we hit play on Sharknado (2013), and it delivered on that promise. This week, I watched Popeye’s Revenge (2025), a low-budget British slasher on Tubi right this moment. You may be thinking, “like the actual Popeye?” I’m here to confirm that, yes, this horror movie does indeed feature beloved public domain sailor, Popeye.

Popeye is another victim of what I’m officially calling the “Childhood Slashers” subgenre, a mix of parody, public domain, and slasher genres. These low-budget meta-slashers feature re-imagined childhood characters as the villains. They often take place at abandoned homes, dilapidated fairgrounds, or neglected fairy tale venues. Best of all, their easy-to-replicate formula and built-in nostalgia make them perfect for the free streaming platform Tubi.

The genre is led by the Twisted Childhood Cinematic Universe (TCU), a nine-movie series created by British filmmaker Rhys Frake-Wakefield, whose biggest release, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023), brought attention to the genre. This prompted British multimedia distributor ITN to bring the bulk of these movies to Tubi. What followed was an abundance of Childhood Slashers that have flooded the streaming platform in the last year.

The genre is definitely not limited to the TCU. Popeye’s Revenge writer Harry Boxley has pumped out six public domain meta-slashers in the last year — including Mouse of Horrors (2025), Mouseboat Massacre (2025), Hook (2025), Fairest of Them All (2025), and Piglet (2025). Bambi: The Reckoning (2025), Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare (2025), and the upcoming Pinocchio: Unstrung (2025) round out the TCU’s official releases. Popeye The Slayer Man (2025) also released and is streaming on Tubi.

It’s well known that horror’s popularity increases during recessions, given anxieties surrounding cultural and economic shifts. Most notably during the “Golden Age of Slashers” in the 1970s and ’80s, which was directly tied to both shifts. The period was marked by both the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements, and protests over the Vietnam War. Concurrently, the ’70s experienced a major recession spurred by stagflation, a period of high inflation and high unemployment.

Slashers were made on shoestring budgets, which limited shooting venues. Their budgets directly impacted visual narratives. Slasher settings feature country cabins, dilapidated homes, and places on the fringes of society where the economically vulnerable and disenfranchised are at higher risk of danger. They’re the easiest places to shoot, usually at low cost, where a bulk of script pages can be filmed in a short time.

Necessary to the slasher are characters that reflect these economic settings. They feature tropes such as the overworked single parent in a low-income neighborhood, the townsfolk of a remote town abandoned by industry, the failing business or person struggling to make ends meet in the country or the city. Like the setting, these characters set the stage for the horror to take place, sometimes participating directly.

It’s no coincidence that many modern horror films are set in Detroit, Michigan. The city is the official face of economic anxieties, having suffered bankruptcy, declining industry, racial tensions, and increased crime. The 2008 recession hit the city’s housing market hard, resulting in abandoned neighborhoods. Films like It Follows (2014), Don’t Breathe (2016) and Barbarian (2022), all feature characters, settings, and narratives that represent the desperation of their times against Detroit’s infamous backdrop.

Having opened 2025 with mass layoffs, the increased cost of eggs, and tariff scares, it’s safe to say those anxieties are back with a vengeance. This time, however, it isn’t Detroit that’s signaling economic crisis. Instead, the indicator is the rise of the free streaming platform where meta-slashers using public domain characters fill out catalogs and keep audiences in-app.

Nostalgia farming works. Playing on the brand recognition public domain characters enjoy, these Childhood Slashers keep audiences on the app, which generates ad-revenue. As evidenced by the number of releases this year alone, filmmakers can pump out constant content regardless of quality on limited budgets. They’re ideal for free streaming platforms like Tubi, whose rising popularity directly correlates with the increase in streaming service costs. There’s no shortage of things to watch, making for an easy cash grab for Tubi and distributors like ITN.

I’m not arguing that these movies are good or even bad-good. Meta-slashers are essentially a self-aware conversation with a film bro. They’re not saying anything new and put in the same effort the film bro put into his reprinted theatrical release Suspiria (1977) poster. Despite this, Popeye’s Revenge managed to be entertaining precisely because it’s utterly ridiculous.

Characters are literally squirted with blood. Like it’s ketchup. My favorite is Popeye’s theme, which is a whispered “yo-ho-ho.” Spinach, boobs, lawnmowers, and boat lairs. It’s mayhem. It’s nonsense. Most importantly, it’s free.