Director: Steve Wolsh
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
After inheriting an old house for graduation, a woman and her friends decide to break in the occasion with a house party where they can enjoy the house together, but when they realize that a vicious serial killer also lives on the property looking to kill them off must try to get away alive.
Review:
Overall, this was a decent enough and watchable slasher effort. Among the brighter points with this one is a seemingly simple and workable storyline that manages to serve everything quite nicely for this type of film. With the backstory about the houses' abandoned nature and a rather fine urban legend about the freakish nature of the house in question, this offers the kind of worthwhile setup that this type of old-school slasher throwback excels at with the concept offering the kind of setting to introduce the particular killer. With that also allowing for the girls to arrive in the story rather nicely with how they take possession of the house for the party and turn the resulting rampage into a rather obvious ploy for control of the property based on this background setup, the story here isn't great but is worthwhile for what it's trying to do.
That serves the film well enough to unleash its main selling point in the carnage on display. The kills here are quite shockingly brutal and graphic in their conception, offering up practical effects-work throughout each of the sequences here which play off quite nicely at the end of the confrontations featured. As this starts off with the attack in the tent by the massive masked killer, this gives us enough to last until the next appearance at the midway point in the film where he stalks one of the girls through a creepy, fog-enshrouded graveyard that's immensely chilling and atmospheric. This sets up the solid final half where he begins chasing them through the house with an assortment of effective weaponry. This offers up some rather enjoyable scenes and setpieces featuring their confrontations with multiple masked killers which are combined with a nice amount of sleaze to give this some worthwhile elements at times.
There are some issues on display that bring this one down. One of the main factors with this one is the lethargic and stilted pacing that makes the film feel far longer than it actually is. The majority of the first half here is focused on getting each of the girls topless while spending agonizing amounts of time wandering about the house, drinking wine, or gossiping about the house's history which only means the former is interesting. Once that's passed, the last three activities are none too intriguing with the whole thing showing off the group as vacuous, self-absorbing rich kids without much going on to make them interesting so that provides an excruciatingly long time before the killings start. The other factor that holds this back is the rather overblown finale that has some bizarre revelations, way too many characters getting revealed, and some twists it didn't need to pad out an already overlong running time based on that first half, all of which bring this down.
Overview: **.5/5
An overall watchable if flawed slasher throwback, this one manages to generate enough likable points to be plainly watchable even if the flaws here can be pretty detrimental for some. Give this a look if you're intrigued by the style or approach here while most others that are turned off by the flaws or even the positives should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment