What do Slasher films need to be good? Pretty simple. Cool looking slasher. No, rubber mask covered by dorky knight helmet. Nudity. Yes lots of that in this one. Real breasts too. Cute enough girls mostly, but hey at least even the not so cute ones look better naked. Acting. Well no, slasher films don't need it, but the best ones usually have at least one good actor to prove good acting still exists. No, no acting here. Scream Queen who can scream. No no good screamers here. You don't expect actors but ones who can at least look scared and girls who can scream. But that is beyond the ability of this movie to achieve. Seems like lots of improvising from one guy lots of mutter profanity. Blood, cool killings. Well, fair amount of blood, killings aren't too convincing or cool. A few moments about two actually but no spoilers here. Excitement. No none here however you define excitement, other than the nudity, oh there's a lesbian scene if you're still awake by then. Style. No no style here. Style over substance is a key element to these films. No style here to speak of. Logic, no slasher films don't need that and this one doesn't have any. 3 people get killed at a large party right in the doorway. The police arrive a bit after that and there is one kind of mild plot twist. Plot twist, well slasher films don't need those, this one has one, but that can't be counted in its favor. Anyway 3 people die and disappear from the story so the story can go on and on. Short running time. Yes this film is short but you sure won't know it unless you constantly look at your watch, which you will be doing especially if your DVD player is too far away to read those little numbers. Cool music either scary or hip or both. No almost no music here and it's all lousy.
To wrap things up if you've seen Asylum movies in the past you probably have a lot of pent up rage at them. If you watched them all you've seen that about one in 5 is pretty good. This is not a pretty good one, nor is it their worst. Though you can't call it a near miss. I guess the final element is good direction that you need in a slasher film and this film definitely doesn't have that. Listless, there is not a memorable shot in the whole film and many unconvincing moments that ruin anything that might build to something. Mostly it has some degree of professionalism to it, until the end credits. The roll starts in a way that the credits vanish half way up the screen and then suddenly they all fill the screen. I Guess they couldn't be bothered to fix that, though they do bother to make them run real slow so they reach that shortest possible length a feature can be, well they actually come up a few seconds short. But it is 85 dullish minutes. But this approach to producing is like those things on the side of a cereal box that says "contents measured by weight" so you can't complain when the mashed to dust cereal only fills the bottom third of a large empty sealed plastic bag. That is too often the approach to movies from THE ASYLUM and it hampers the hell out of a possibly decent by the numbers script by Fangoria's Michael Gingold. The production left out most of the numbers as I've tried to spell out above.
To wrap things up if you've seen Asylum movies in the past you probably have a lot of pent up rage at them. If you watched them all you've seen that about one in 5 is pretty good. This is not a pretty good one, nor is it their worst. Though you can't call it a near miss. I guess the final element is good direction that you need in a slasher film and this film definitely doesn't have that. Listless, there is not a memorable shot in the whole film and many unconvincing moments that ruin anything that might build to something. Mostly it has some degree of professionalism to it, until the end credits. The roll starts in a way that the credits vanish half way up the screen and then suddenly they all fill the screen. I Guess they couldn't be bothered to fix that, though they do bother to make them run real slow so they reach that shortest possible length a feature can be, well they actually come up a few seconds short. But it is 85 dullish minutes. But this approach to producing is like those things on the side of a cereal box that says "contents measured by weight" so you can't complain when the mashed to dust cereal only fills the bottom third of a large empty sealed plastic bag. That is too often the approach to movies from THE ASYLUM and it hampers the hell out of a possibly decent by the numbers script by Fangoria's Michael Gingold. The production left out most of the numbers as I've tried to spell out above.