Directed by: Joseph Ariola
Starring: Nicole Abisinio, Chris Bashinelli, Kat Castaneda, Antonio Mastrantonio, Kim Taggart, Sal Sirchia, Joli Julianna, Lou Savarese, Stephanie Finochio
Genre: Horror/Slasher
Rated: Unrated
The story follows a group of teenagers being killed off one by one in ways that are similar to their father’s professions. Sounds interesting, right? Sure, but the execution of the film made it barely watchable.
The acting was absolutely atrocious. I know bad acting is to be expected from low-budget, but damn. All of the actors were either incredibly wooden or over-acting. The kids were all blitz attacked so they didn’t have to try and act scared. Also there were some people with awkwardly noticeable accents varying from New York, to Boston, to sounding like rejects from The Sopranos. Awful. Still, Oscar Winners couldn’t even save this drivel. The dialogue was terrible – it wouldn’t be believable no matter who said it or how it was said. The entire film was poorly written – it feels like this was a first draft that Ariola wrote up in one weekend and then ran with. The killer is supposed to be human, yet some of the kills are just ridiculous. The opening kill – which is supposed to catch the attention of the audience – was incredibly dull, with the killer just knocking on the door and disappearing whenever the victim answered it. This goes on for about six minutes before he punches through a solid door and grabs her by the throat. He kills another victim by stabbing the blunt end of a mop or broom handle through his stomach. Both seemed very far-fetched and ridiculous. This guy is not Jason Voorhees – he’s human, therefore he should not be able to do such things. It’s not scary, it’s just dumb.
The characters are unlikable – all of them. We have the cliché macho jock male, his head cheerleader “I think I’m all that” blonde girlfriend, the stoner, and then a bunch of bland forgettable characters ripe for the killing. I didn’t care about the “final girl” – they never gave me any reason to. Normally I’m always rooting for the girl in the final battle, but she wasn’t given a chance to fight back, and she had no personality to begin with. The whole long-lost grandfather storyline irritated me as well – even though he was the best character in the film. It was like the Ariola was thinking, “Well, they’re all on the chopping block anyway, who cares what they’re like?” An example of bad writing is when the “Rico” story enters the plotline. All of a sudden, Grandpa Mike is asking around about a guy named Rico, who had been caught in a fire in his father’s funeral home, and then committed soon after. However, we never learn where he got this information, so the audience is left asking “Where the hell did this come from?” There are two characters named “Billy” – one male and the other female – as well as a completely unnecessary character in Cindy’s skanky older sister. Also, for the record, if your grown male son is sitting in his room playing with dolls that have pictures of the victims plastered to their faces, it is not touching, it’s creepy and a sign your son might be involved in the murders. Just a hint.
The wardrobe is pretty absurd too. The female cop is always wearing short skirts, high heels, and tops that either bare cleavage or are see-through. Somehow, I don’t really think a female detective who probably has to spend her days chasing perps and doing legwork would wear something as impractical as stilettos. Plus, police work is still considered very much a man’s world – a woman in that field would be trying to be taken seriously, not objectifying herself in the workplace. Also, in the flashback sequence, the guys in it are supposed to be from the late ‘70s to mid ‘80s, yet their clothes look like what high school kids wear today. One guy in the back had a giant afro, but that’s about the only thing to signify it was a different era. The camera work on this film was very shoddy in places. There were shaky zoom-ins and zoom-outs, and there were places you can tell a hand-held was used because the camera shakes so much. It was a bit dizzying. I also felt like a pervert during Cindy’s shower sequence because of how the camera just lingered on her naked body as she lathers soap all over it. I don’t know if they were trying to create suspense here, but I felt like a creeper staring at her breasts for three minutes because the camera man couldn’t stop focusing on them. It was an obvious attempt at luring the young adolescent male audience and it was annoying.
You can tell the production values are low because of how poorly edited and retouched it was. Some of the dialogue was hard to hear from one person but completely fine from another – things like that can be touched up after filming has wrapped. They sell programs for it that can be installed on your home computer. Same with edits – there were a lot of cut-to-black spaces. I know college students who could put together a better film than this. The one thing this film does have going for it – aside from the interesting premise – is the actual death sequences. I think most of the budget must have gone to the special effects because they were awesome. The deaths themselves were way too quick to have me scared at all, but the killer mutilated a few of the bodies afterward – some of which was cringe-worthy, even though the victim is dead. The intestines looked real and there was a lot of gore. I was pissed some of the more deserving characters were killed off-screen. I really wanted to see the cliché jock bite it.
Overall:
This film had no suspense whatsoever and very bland and unlikable characters. It’s very poorly written and acted. The only good thing about it is the special effects, but they do not make this worth watching. I’d recommend you skip this one.
3.5/10
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