Director: Christopher Wesley Moore
Year: 2016
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
After a disastrous breakup with her fiancee, a young woman trying to move on with her life finds her dating life and other personnel problems are interrupted by learning she’s pregnant, and after having an abortion finds her and her friends followed by religious protestors hoping to purify their souls.
Review:
This was a pretty underwhelming if still enjoyable effort. Among the film’s biggest issues is the low-budget nature that creeps up throughout here in the form of obvious indie mistakes which are all part of being a first-time filmmaker. That there’s plenty of scenes here focusing on glaring and obvious technical mistakes entered mostly around a conversation in the ice-cream parlor that’s hilariously overdubbed with barely anything matching up to their lip=movements or reactions which becomes distracting as it carries on. Some of the other scenes, from the lighting on the various killer lurking in the background which is completely out-of-touch to the flimsy props used for the gore scenes, look completely fake and obvious.
As well, there’s a decidedly noticeable and obvious misstep with film in how it treats the faceless killers. They have no real motive or backstory here to garget this group specifically since there’s nothing about how they fall in line with this rationale of thinking if the entire purpose is o help ease the burden of perceived sinners. Not only that, but there’s also no excuse for them borrowing tactics and tricks from numerous other films in the past trying to make it seem like homages instead of logical tactics employed for this fictional war they’re enacting and their general sloppiness committing these crimes with no one noticing anything or that they’ve gone missing is all highly unlikely.
The last flaw here is the terrible and off-putting pace that drags this out way too long for its own good. That manages to come about through several matters, such as overlong conversations about losing their virginity, endless conversations about her bad behavior in life and even beyond that to feature some of the stalking scenes on display to go overboard with having too much going on. Other scenes come off as unnecessary and could’ve been trimmed out altogether, from a movie-theater met-up, constant go-nowhere conversations about the new boyfriend or getting distracted by off-screen noises but forgetting about them two seconds later, come off as even more obvious padding to stretch it out. These are what hold this one down.
There are some rather enjoyable elements here which is pretty easy to figure out. The film manages to get its best work out of the traditional stalking done by the killers, wearing some absolutely chilling infant-like masks that have quite an impression beyond their propensity to sneak out of the shadows with their victims unknowing. The main stalking setpiece comes about in the final half where a series of scenes intertwined throughout the girls’ house manages to offer up both kinds of slasher fun where there’s both unaware ambushes and prolonged stalking and chasing which gets fun and chilling in equal measures. Armed alongside the bloody kills, it has enough to like here to lift this one up somewhat over the negatives.
Overview: **.5/5
Despite a few minor and somewhat problematic areas that do hold this back somewhat, when this one comes to it’s most enjoyable and appreciable elements there’s much more to like than get turned off by. Give this a look if you’re a fan of these kinds of message-driven genre efforts or looking for a solid, hard-hitting indie effort while those who are turned off by the negatives should heed caution.
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