Director: Danielle Harris, Scout Taylor-Compton
Year: 2026
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Till Death Do Us Part
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Heading out into the desert, a group of friends looking to get married stop off at a friendly-looking motel to get prepared for their eventual wedding, but when they realize the staff are psychotic cannibals looking to kill and eat them, they band together and fight back to get away alive.
Review:
This was a decent enough and likable slasher. One of the better elements here is the rather fun and generally workable storyline that provides a chance to look into the festivities at the motel as well as the friend group as a whole. Giving a chance to explore them by looking at their trip out into the desert, stopping at the motel, and exploring it as a potential spot for their nuptials comes off rather nicely, making the exploits involving them cracking jokes about each other, banter about the situation, and the different interactions that take place with the staff at the motel once they arrive come together to make everything here feel quite enjoyable. That makes everything all the more intriguing once they start preparing for everything in earnest and going through with the wedding, allowing this to play up some of the intriguing storylines developed between the friend group as a way to make sure the rampage taking place on the outskirts of the story stays hidden and kept under the radar.
That all leads nicely into the rather fun and immensely likable series of scenes involving the killer coming into play and starting to rampage through the group. With the first few encounters of the figure running around in the background that offer up the kind of quick-shot encounters that take out several random members of the group, it all sets up the later scenes focusing on the reveal of the ravenous cannibals going around the motel grabbing and attacking everyone. These encounters are quite fun and brutal, bringing about some great confrontations at the reception hall where they get married, trapped inside their rooms, or being chased around the main part of the motel that all focus on the brutality of the situation involving the torture and dismemberment of their victims as everything comes together. With some great action and brawling here, focusing on incorporating the twist of the situation into a big chance to get away, there’s a lot to like here to hold this one up.
There are a few factors here that bring this down. The main issue here is the immensely troubling finale, where it manages to go off into several random variants that are difficult to get behind. Not only does this go on a wildly cliched tangent with the exploits of the cannibals torturing and mocking the eventual victims after they’ve been captured that numerous films have copied, but it also introduces one of the most hackneyed and predictable twists ever in who’s involved with the family once it’s revealed the whole thing was a setup. This is immensely troubling with the way it tries to paint the whole thing as a surprise when it’s quite simple and stupid, changes around quite a bit of the film for no real reason, and just becomes eye-roll-inducing once the whole thing is spelled out with yet another repeat of the kind of familiar motivation behind everything. The low-budget limitation also comes into play here, but otherwise, these are the main factors keeping this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A really solid and enjoyable slasher effort, there’s a lot to like here that comes together well enough to offset some of the issues here that end up holding this back just slightly. Those with an appreciation for this kind of genre fare or who are fans of the creative crew will have the most to like here, while most others out there might want to heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment