Director: G. Patrick Condon
Year: 2019
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Torture Slasher; Horror/Comedy
Plot:
Arriving at a secluded house, a desperate filmmaker tries to blow through the filming of his low-budget movie as quickly as possible only for the pressures of filmmaking to finally cause him and the rest of the crew to snap their sanity and place them all in mortal danger.
Review:
For the most part, there wasn’t a whole lot to like with this one. One of the few memorable moments here is the fact that the film goes for a rather intriguing and modern take on the film-shoot-gone-wrong meta-horror film. Featuring the actress who’s completely out of her element being on her first professional job against the others who have done it before and trained for it allows for a rather chilling time here when things start to go wrong as the idea of them not believing her due to the inexperience of shooting a movie is a far more realistic explanation for doing so. Instead of just laughing off the claims about someone killing the cast, their take of her not knowing the intricacies of filmmaking carries a fair amount of weight which is quite interesting to play out here. This adds a nice sense of tension and genuine thrills to the stalking scenes that transpire here as the killer coming along and doing it all for the sake of the film, turning victims around to face the cameras better or get the blood-spray to face them. However, that’s all that really works here as the film has plenty of problems.
Among the more troubling issues is the fact that this setup here doesn't really generate any kind of likable qualities that forms the basis for the supposed comedy here. Instead, this is treated more like a quirky group of individuals, from the down-on-his-luck burnout of a director who blew through his money and is looking tor recoup it quickly to the naive actress looking at this as her big break which is simply well-worn tropes that have nothing all that much done differently with them. The fact that is supposed to be funny because the concept of these people running around the house who are aware of what’s going on and mentioning the hip modern lingo during these conversations is nowhere close to generating a laugh. The actual film they’re making doesn’t raise suspicions based on the genuinely interesting proposition that they’re simply doing the same thing over and over again without anyone mentioning or reacting to that valid point. However, all of this is treated as hilarious with the light tone displayed here because the hip and modern characters are saying it which is completely untrue.
On top of that, the film’s other problem is that it simply makes no sense for the vast majority of its actions. The central concept for the film about the filmmaker going berserk and deciding to kill off the crew who are unknowing that he’s changed the rules to do so and brings about several big question marks about it. There’s nothing about what would lead him to consider the concept as it’s not driven by internal forces within a haunted house and he’s not deranged at all, leading to a questionable decision to go into the executioner role that he does here since it seems to have no provocation to do so. Likewise, there are no questions at all from the cast who are visibly torturing each other with the intent that they have the same script yet no one ever bothers to query anyone else about it, especially after the rightful point about only filming the same scene on separate days with dwindling cast members that no one notices. With a finale that makes no sense at all and no motivation for anything that happens here, there’s a lot of flaws here.
Overview: */5
With plenty of troubling issues and not a whole lot of positives to be had here, this one ends up with such a wide range of flaws holding it back that it’s not all that worthwhile overall. Really only give this one a shot if you’re a fan of these meta-horror genre pieces or are curious about it, but those looking for something more substantial and coherent should heed extreme caution.
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