More so-so slasher films I really cannot expend too much energy reviewing in depth…
*
PAINTBALL MASSACRE
2020/15/93m
“Paintballing has never been so deadly.”
Director: Chris Regan / Writer: Darren Berry / Cast: Katy Brand, Lee Latchford-Evans, Cheryl Burniston, Lockhart Ogilvie, Natasha Killip, Nathan Clough, Aoife Smyth, Ryan Winsley, Brendan Carr, Tony Banham, Joe Hallett.
Body Count: ~19
Laughter Lines: “Did you ever see 2fast2furious? I used to think it was a gay love story.”
Bargain bin stuff with a cover designed to look like Shaun of the Dead and boast it’s comparable to Hot Fuzz. It is not.
A large group of school friends gather some sixteen years after school ended for a game of paintball. There’s traumatised ex-soldier Dan, I-can-sell-anything Ben, ‘famous’ pin-up Lauren, and former-nerd Jessica, who was only going for the sake of her fiance, Simon, who never shows up.
After being trounced by another team several times, the once-friends find their rivals have been massacred and now a paintball-masked loon is after them, with… a paintball gun? Seriously, grab a big stick and whack him with it.
Mucho splitting up and running off around the forest ensues until people are impaled with signs, buried alive, crucified, and drowned. The dwindling numbers suspect an old classmate they humiliated – or Jess’s fiance Simon, who apparently isn’t the nice guy he seems to be.
This was cruising for a fair 2.5 stars thanks to a few chucklesome lines, but then came the end. Fuck this ending, man. What. A. Cop. Out. I snatch back that extra star. Elsewhere, some characters just disappear from the film altogether, or are last seen alive without any closure provided.
Lee from British dance-pop sensation Steps plays a suicidal fireman, a plot aspect never explored or revisited. He just about comes out of things unscathed, career wise. The viewers? Maybe not so fortunate.
*
*
BLOODY CRAYONS
2017/15/109m
Director: Topel Lee / Writers: Josh Argonza, Enrico C. Santos, Kenneth Dagatan / Cast: Janella Salvador, Ronnie Alonte, Jane Oineza, Elmo Magalona, Sofia Andres, Diego Loyzaga, Maris Racal, Yves Flores.
Body Count: 9
Laughter Lines: “I ran because I needed to poop! Smell my hand! Smell it!”
This Filipino adaptation of a novel of the same name is not, sadly, about a box of Crayola possessed by evil. Nor does the killer wield a sharpened crayon to gouge out eyeballs. Instead, the title refers to a Truth or Dare-style game where different colours require different actions.
Said game is played by a large group of teen filmmakers who are on a secluded island to finish shooting a horror movie. When one of the kids dies from drinking a concoction of gross liquids designated by pulling the final crayon of a certain colour, everything goes to shit.
Before the as-awful Bodies Bodies Bodies, there was this. When we finally get to the action (there’s 40 minutes of teen melodrama before they even mention the fucking crayons), it’s people accusing each other of killing someone else, then another schmuck is shot during a struggle over a gun, someone hits their head on the edge of a sink, fall into a trap in the woods, etc. It’s essentially that Double Spiderman meme put to film. Repeatedly.
Decent production values can’t resuscitate this sedative, which grinds on relentlessly for almost two hours. The killer’s identity is blaringly obvious for anyone who’s seen even just a handful of slasher movies, or a few episodes of a soap opera, and that the wacko only manages to off a couple of people themself is just a second kick to the balls.
Stick to Basag Ang Pula for your Filipino slasher needs.
*
*
AQUASLASH
2019/71m
“Blood is slicker than water.”
Director/Writer: Renaud Gauthier / Cast: Nicolas Fontaine, Brittany Drisdelle, Lanisa Dawn, Nick Walker, Madeline Harvey, Paul Zinko, Chip Chupka, Howard Rosenstein, Ryan Ali, Cameron Geller, Ivan Ossa.
Body Count: 10
Seemingly constructed entirely around one scene that was pushed in the trailers, of nubile teenagers rocketing down a waterslide where razorsharp blades have been criss-crossed to tetrasect anybody who rides it. There’s almost nothing else going on in Aquaslash.
Wet Valley Waterpark was the scene of murders 35 years earlier, and when the graduating class of the local high school rent it for a big party, a mystery killer offs a couple of staff members, and then does almost nothing for the next 50 minutes until the slide race kicks off.
Even at just 71 minutes including credits, this is pumped with more filler than a Kardashian butt cheek, boring characters dominate most of it with their badly acted melodramas (everyone’s screwing someone else), and something about a buy-out. One actor’s hair changes entirely between scenes, the park owner calls patrons sluts to their faces, and multiple asshole characters’ fates are either left unresolved or they’re allowed to survive despite being total douches.
That scene in The Pool did it better, but at least this is the tiniest of notches above Piranha 3DD, thanks mostly to fairly decent production values.
Blurb-of-interest: Renaud Gauthier was also responsible for also whacky, but better Discopath.
*
*
PARTY NIGHT
2017/71m
“Try to make it until morning.”
Director/Writer: Troy Escamilla / Cast: Laurel Toupal, Ryan Poole, Drew Shotwell, Destinie Orndoff, Tommie Vegas, Billy Brannigan.
Body Count: 7
Laughter Lines: “[Calm down] this is not Camp Crystal Lake.”
Three teen couples skip their after prom bash to have their own private party at a house by a lake where young women have been going missing for a while.
One by one they wander off and get murdered by some old dude, and then when someone goes to look for the person who disappeared before them, the cycle starts again.
Gotta wonder why anyone would pass up a big kegger to sit in a really boring house with a few tins of beer and a deck of cards? It tries to be clever; One guy watches a slasher movie as his girlfriend is being skewered elsewhere in the house and blurts at the TV: “Come on, you have to know all your friends are dead!”
Drags, even at just 71 minutes, though it may be the first time I’ve seen someone impaled on the handle of a frying pan. And the artwork is cool.
*
*
BLOOD ON THE BLEACHERS
2025/123m
“Heads of the class… will roll.”
Director: Chase Dudley / Cast: Arianna Harris, Houston Buckley, Leonard Petterson III, Chloe Lutz, Ka’ssee Rhe’anne, Holly Anspaugh, Herb White III, Casey Mircale, Leonora Scelfo, Lisa Wilcox.
Laughter Lines: “Hannah has been doing research on this project on her own. Sadly you’re gonna need a substitute teacher, but you can still finish the project.”
Unsolved murders of staff and students at a small town high school become the basis for a criminology assignment at said school!!! Because that would be allowed, and is not at all in poor taste.
Things start acceptably with the woman who played the bitchy bathroom cheerleader in Scream being chased by the knife-wielding maniac. An unspecified amount of time later, studious teen Hannah and her study group work up a psychological profile (the results of which are ‘male’ and ‘white’), while she tries to attract the attention of sketchy classmate Ben, avoid other guy Brandon, and the murders continue.
- Is the prom cancelled? No.
- Is the school closed after five murders the previous day? No.
- Do characters still find a reason to walk off on their own despite the above? Yes!
Ben is seeing visions of his ‘all girls are whores!’-spouting mother (played by Lisa Wilcox from Elm Street‘s 4 and 5), and Hannah’s detective mom actually encourages the teens to finish their profiling project even after their teacher is murdered (see Laughter Lines), which necessitates the remaining kids to go and explore a deserted house with her blessing!
There is, however, a pretty good chase scene at the midway point, and the plus two hour running time allows for a little more character development and plot strands than usual (even if someone of them seem entirely superfluous). Acting ranges from passable to deer-in-the-headlights terrible, but the outcome of the mystery at least wasn’t predictable.
Blurbs-of-interest: Scelfo was also in Do You Wanna Know a Secret.
2018/103m
2007/92m
