Director: Eric Liberacki
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Following the death of a faculty member, the students of a local high school play decide to carry on in their honor, but when the lead actress becomes convinced that she’s in danger for a cruel prank she and her friends pulled years earlier they find the performance targeted by a masked killer out for revenge.
Review:
On the whole, this was a disappointing slasher. One of the better aspects here is the rather fun setup and layout of the school’s performances that are shown here. The performances pieces are quite high-end for a high-school quality production, especially the opening which goes alongside the fine stalking of the victim throughout the school as it’s ongoing. Likewise, the latter part of the film where it goes away from the school to a series of enjoyable stalking at the house part gets another fun addition of some brutal kills to the mix with bashings by a bat, drowning in a sink and numerous grisly impalements which is all that is likable here, unfortunately.
There are some big problems on display. Among the biggest drawbacks is an utterly bland, cliche and unimpressive high-school drama setup that takes place at the school. The entire setup about the backstabbing and jealousy that arises when dealing with the club-members, from secretly trying to sabotage the other actors to get their turn in the spotlight or the clique of mean girls trying to get through the year together with a secret intact, are nowhere near interesting at all and are just absolute cliches that have no point in being included here. All their inclusion seems to offer up is eye-rolling and boredom throughout the first half here with the inclusion of these insipid and useless elements present.
The other problem is the terrible and completely out-of-left-field finale that undermines what happened beforehand here. The true revelation of the killer makes no sense as there’s nothing about their intentions mentioned as a motivation for getting involved that requires them to engage in this slaughter as all of it just comes off as stupid. That reveal also changes around a leads’ likability by switching around their entire setup in order to have it make sense, and the entire outcome in the hospital makes no sense either if the entire point is undermined by performing what happens in full view of everyone. It’s not shocking, intriguing and just makes this more of a mess than it should.
Overview: */5
Countless cliches, nonsensical plot points and uninteresting slash scenes don’t really work for creating fine slashers which all combine together to hurt this one significantly. It’s really only for the most hardcore slasher completist or fans of the creative crew, while everyone else won’t find much to enjoy here.
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