Director: Tim Hannigan
Year: 2024
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Preparing for a new event, a team of killers are brought out into the woods for a full-on livestream where they stalk and target a group of unsuspecting victims for paying customers over the stream, but when one of them threatens to expose everything they must find a way to stop their plans.
Review:
For the most part, this was a fairly solid and enjoyable indie slasher. One of the more intriguing elements of this one is the fine setup that enables this one to work in a rather intriguing manner by going for a slasher throwback feature. The idea of this one going for a special organized style of livestream offering a betting system for viewers to gamble on how the killers are going to perform on the occasion offers a really strong start to this one. As we get a solid series of ground rules about the setup for how they’re expected to operate, what things they can and can’t do, and what the whole experience is said to bring about, there’s a fine concept at play that goes along nicely with the secondary storyline about the survivor coming back for revenge several years after leaving one version of the games by taking out the other killers assigned to participate. It’s a fun enough addition and helps to add quite a bit to the film as a whole.
That allows for a surprisingly strong series of stalking scenes that are brought into play with this one. The opening here offers a fine retelling of the past events that left the one girl as the lone survivor to get away has a fun time alongside the highlight reel of the previous years' versions of the event. The later scenes focusing on the killers going around to the early arrivals around the woods offer plenty to like here with the drunken campers or the necking couple in their car which are all brought together rather nicely to give this a great sense of what’s on display. As it gets to the survivor stalking the killers and taking them out while undergoing the livestream of the whole affair, this has a solid series of cross-selections that gives everything a far cheesier touch than expected which all combine into a solid enough time to this one.
There are some big factors here that hold this one down. Among its biggest drawbacks is a grossly underwhelming finale that tries to spend a great deal of time building up a concept of morality involving this kind of illicit internet activity but just comes off as incredibly shortsighted. This one tries to tell the story that there’s something unethical about this type of activity where those who are watching and enjoying the carnage are just as bad as the ones who set it up but there’s just nothing here to help this beyond the immensely lame finale where everything tries to get explored. However, it’s too little too late to try to offer something this deep, especially with the kind of lackluster activity it uses to try to pull this off. Combined with the obvious and generally underwhelming low-budget nature of everything with how it comes together, these all manage to bring this down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A highly effective and enjoyable indie slasher, there’s a lot to this one that manages to hold itself up over a couple of minor drawbacks which are there to lower this one just slightly. Give it a shot if you’re a fan of the type of genre effort found here or are curious about it while most others out there might want to heed caution.
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