Director: Andrea M. Catinella
Year: 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Concerned about their friends’ behavior, a group of friends stage an intervention to get her off drugs and decide to send her to a rehab center to get everything under control, but when she finds a masked killer stalking her friends, they must get the others to believe her to stop it.
Review:
This was a somewhat disappointing and underwhelming genre effort. Among the better elements of this one come from the generally impressive stalking scenes at play, which are handled in a striking series of ambushes and other stalking scenes. The opening sequence showing the older couple being targeted and attacked by the killer is incredibly effective, with the killer not just methodically stalking after them but also using the old-school cartoon taunting them before striking with a series of unhinged and unnerving visuals of it killing others around him, setting a great tone for this one to work off of. Later scenes, especially the different encounters in the woods around the treatment facility where he targets the screwing couple in the woods or trap the arriving family in their car to them kill them, focus on the inherent brutality and savagery of the killer with repeated slashes and stabbings which provide this with some gruesome encounters that are far better than they have any reason to be, quite like the imposing characters’ presence and blood-stained mask.
Outside of that, the film manages to be a slight disappointment as there’s one of the most jumbled and chaotic storylines to contend with. The whole storyline about the killer arriving because of a connection with the videotape and all who view it makes no sense, given how it’s able to get around the facility like it does, killing others, or why it’s even targeting them to begin with, as the backstory makes it clear that the one who watches the tape is the target. That this storyline is repped out of one of the most prominent and impressive genre entries out there and isn’t shy about taking that particular bit of influence, so everything is overly familiar to the point of being questionable about why it’s included. The other issue here, about the connection to the original story where it tries to bring this all together with the point of the drug use tying into the killer going around without repercussions avoiding the issue entirely, makes far better use as a standalone effort rather than being shoehorned into this style of parody so it feels rather awkward in that regard, being what holds this one down.
Overview: ***/5
A fun but overall problematic slasher effort, this one comes together quite nicely in the more important elements of its setup while being more problematic in those outside areas. Those with an appreciation for this kind of indie effort or who enjoy the public-domain rip-offs will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed outright avoidance.
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