Director: Katherine Hicks
Year: 2001
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Winter Chills
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Trying to get together with friends, a bullied guy hoping to get into the good graces of the woman he admires is rejected to the point of killing himself over it, but when the group starts mysteriously dying find he has returned as a vicious killer looking for her.
Review:
For the most part, this was a somewhat disappointing and underwhelming genre effort. Among the more positive factors found here is the solid enough series of dynamics at play that highlight the group's connection and how it all sets up the later encounters here. The idea of getting as in-depth as it does with the role-playing dynamics within the group and getting an idea of how the friend-group operates, where most of them use it as a way to get drunk or relive their glory days in high school while he tries to put his skills to the test to focus on getting closer to the woman he has a crush on sets everything together in giving us an idea about how they come together. With the groups' dynamics brought into focus with the kind of expected sequences where he's bullied by the others there, and focusing on the build-up to the rampage later on, it all makes the later scenes feel more earned than anything. The scenes of the killer knight coming to life and stalking the friends are fun enough and manage to provide some solid enough situations where he begins taking them out for how they treated him.
Beyond that, there's not much to be said for this one. The majority of that is down to the sluggish and non-existent pacing here, spending an agonizing half hour of the group playing their game and going through the motions of what's an easy to establish setup involving the rest of the group tormenting him for his fanatical devotion to the game or unwanted affection for the other member of the group before even getting to the idea of the resurrected killer gets introduced. Moreover, the lethargic investigation into the crimes once they start is painfully weak and uneventful, displaying a profoundly worrying mentality where the idea of playing these games is enough to make them worthwhile of mockery and ridicule for no reason. With no gore in a toned-down, kid-friendly rating also holding it down, these factors are what end up being the film's big problems.
Overview: */5
An okay watch but not without some massive flaws, this one is a bit of a mess with a solid enough idea and some decent sequences, let down by a crawling pace and some troubling developments. Those with an appreciation for this style of genre fare or who are curious about its connections will have the most to like here, while most others out there should heed extreme caution.
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