I’m just wondering how much longer filmmakers will continue to churn out these horror flicks that are intended to an homage to the 1980s slasher movies but lack what made them enjoyable.
I’m not saying every slasher flick of the era was great. Most of them were awful. But they’re like a strange time capsule reminder of a few years when the film industry was going through a strange transition. Oscar winners Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Holly Hunter and many more cut their teeth appearing in these cheap exploitation movies. People still talk about The Pony Express and that only lasted a year and a half. But still these slashers had their own charm as they appeal to a demographic who spent their weekends watching them in theaters back when they were more independently owned or on the VCRs at late-night slumber parties.
Even when the Scream franchise help revitalize the subgenre with the WB/CW actors becoming victims, it didn’t have much of a success either. But at least they didn’t have the pretentious insistence upon itself that the current batch do. One thing Eli Roth did with Thanksgiving is by making it a modern-day horror movie that felt like a 1980s slasher movie but never get nudging us like Eric Idle going “Know what I mean. Know what I mean.”
Night of the Reaper is one of the most boring unoriginal slasher movies ever made. There’s an impressive opening like in the first Scream and the original When A Stranger Calls where a young woman, Emily (Summer H. Howell), is tormented by a masked killer. Some time later, a college student, Deena (Jessica Clement), finds herself babysitting Max Arnold (Max Christensen), the young son of the widowed sheriff Rodney Arnold (Ryan Robbins) when a friend gets sick.
But then, nothing really much happens. Some people have accused the original Halloween or even the original Friday the 13th or having a slow pace with little events happening, but there was a mood the filmmakers brought to those flicks. This is another horror movie that wants a “big twist” that never really works because nothing really builds up to it.
And of course the twist works on the premise that every single objective that makes it work happens just the way a character anticipates. Sometimes you have to suspend disbelief. But in this case, I really didn’t care at all about what happened, what the killer’s motive was or how anyone in this movie would actually exist in real life.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 