Director: Owen Egerton
Year: 2018
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Secretly attending a horror film festival, a teen and his friends find that the supposed attractions and festivities designed to celebrate the genre have been orchestrated to turn into a round of murderous killers and movie monsters out to kill them and must use their genre skills to get out alive.
Review:
This was a highly enjoyable if somewhat flawed genre effort. One of the main elements that this one works nicely on is the actual idea of the movie festival that would play out in the beginning. The concept of the woods-based festival being turned into a carnival-like celebration of the genre with a series of games, attractions and various events designed around the idea of horror being a point of having a massive gathering filled with hundreds of people. This comes off incredibly well and has a great sense of humor and creativity to pull this off.
That in turn leads to the films' best aspects in the series of relentless confrontations in the park where the monstrous creatures run rampant on the group trying to escape. From the opening massacre of the guests at the festivities' opening ceremony is a fantastic sequence that really turns the meta-ness of the live-kill at a party in front of a crowd anticipating everything going on in front of them, this one has a great sense of turning the classic tropes of the genre into a fully enjoyable, action-packed ride through the various exploits that are brought up throughout here.
The later scenes of them running through the park encountering people like the zombies out in the shack that has them erupt from underneath the ground to attack in great zombie action, the encounter with the real-life variation of the killer their actor friend played, the ordeal with the vampires and the series of encounters with the possessed members of the park that come after them leading into the finale where it generates a slew of fun, blood-drenched encounters which move this along at such a rapid pace that there's no down-time at all from all the crazed situations.
In the midst of all this, there are a few minor issues to hold it back. The fact that it speaks quite heavily on the nature of being corrupted by the violence of films and turning that into a psycho in real-life is entirely mishandled, treating something that really could've been explored more than what's going on here. Spending the time on the behind-the-scenes manipulation of these sources is wasted with the lame, glossed-over reasoning in the finale which is just completely underwhelming as it takes a fun idea and drops it completely. As well as the lack of nudity when it clearly called for it, there's not much else really wrong with this one.
Overview: **** 1/2/5
While it does somewhat stumble at the wrong point, the film does offer more than enough to like here in so many other factors that it's more than enough to make this enjoyable. Give this a chance if you're looking for a fun, over-the-top genre ride or enjoy this brand of meta-heavy genre fare, while those that don't appreciate that style should heed caution if still looking at it anyway.
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