Director: Kristine Peterson
Year: 1988
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psychological
Plot:
Troubled by strange dreams, a man tries to get to the bottom of everything with the help of his friends and new girlfriend to figure out why he’s been seeing the masked killer who traumatized him as a child only for a series of cruel developments to hinder his progress.
Review:
Overall, this was a fairly solid if somewhat troubling genre effort. Among the better features here come from the strong setup that allows for the film to be a highly effective psychological genre effort. With a fantastic starting point including the harrowing murder of his parents by the killer in a chilling wolf mask and just barely escaping, this type of encounter affects him later in life to the point of still hallucinating the encounter or dreaming about the killer returning in his dreams. These encounters are built up nicely throughout here to the point of starting to genuinely believe that the situation has started to really affect him and that his unhinged nature at the center of this one has come to pass. With it leading into a fun finale with some striking twists and some fine goer effects that really help to establish the central plotline of this one, there are some good points to this one.
There are some big problems here keeping this one down. The main issue is the fact that there’s just not a whole lot else going on here while it’s building up this psychological breakdown. This type of idea works far better as a short with the idea of him still being tormented by the dreams but unable to prove it so things like the idea of him going around seeing the hunter at his house, in the gym, or stalking trips with his girlfriend tend to meander around without a whole lot o purpose. Even though the trauma is somewhat justifiable and reasonable to still be struggling with, there’s nothing here that keeps it interesting beyond waiting to see where the whole thing goes and gets resolved.
This also causes the film to rely so much on the nature of being unable to tell dreams from reality that the attempts at curtailing his mental state fall into a somewhat neverending series of freakouts over things that may or may not be there to then realize it was a dream-within-a-dream that comes about way too often to be effective. Even with the idea of there being a genuine killer there, this tactic becomes far too irritating and repetitive dragging the pacing out. Also rather dragging is the tired cliche about the true purpose behind everything which comes across as quite overbearing and doesn’t have the kind of sting expected of it due to following the expected revelation which gives this a somewhat large series of drawbacks to overcome the positives.
Overview: **.5/5
An interesting idea if somewhat let down by some big flaws, this one comes off as an overlong idea that could've been trimmed down into something far more intriguing than it is. Those with an interest in this style of genre fare or don’t mind the issues here will have the most to kike here while most others turned off by these features should heed caution.
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