I thought the previews made this look like a run of the mill slasher at a carnival. I am curious if this will present anything special that I don’t anticipate. That would be good. Tony Todd of Candyman and Final Destination fame is in this along with Amy Forsyth who I really enjoyed in Channel Zero’s second season. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, and it is a shorter film, so hopefully, it doesn’t waste time.
I’m already concerned that 4 of the 5 top-billed characters are female. This is a big concern and will greatly impact my rating if we just get the Descent at the end. Bear McCreary is doing the music, and he did the Walking Dead theme. Oh, there’s Gale Anne Hurd, also of TWD fame.
Okay, the opening scene during the credits was promising. Please don’t be the best that this film offers. A girl was going through a haunted house type thing, gets to a dead end and gets stabbed and then lynched. Solid start.
Okay, we meet Natalie, Taylor, and Brooke. Taylor is the foul-mouthed, trying to be the funny girl. Natalie is played by Amy Forsyth and Brooke is somebody who I don’t know, but I think this is her house. Natalie has a raging clue for Gavin. Christ, this is lewd as fuck. I think Quinn is Brooke’s ss boy toy. That would leave us with Gavin and Asher. Asher and Taylor would make some sense. Okay, Taylor can die right now. SO obnoxious. Seriously, anybody that has to say that it’s time for shots should be euthanized. One review on IMDB said that the characters weren’t horrible people that you want to get killed. I vehemently disagree.
Okay, so a guy is also here and he just put on a mask and is presumably the killer. Then he bumped into a bitch that called him an asshole. Do you know how everyone couldn’t wait for Paris Hilton to get killed in House of Wax? Yeah, that’s where I’m at with Taylor. I wouldn’t enjoy this experience. A girl came out pleading for help. The killer shows up and the 3 girls mock the killer. He then finds the girl that he was chasing and kills her in front of Natalie who thought it was all fake. Where are the guys suddenly?
Now the dude is slowly stalking them. Gavin is bad at carnival games. Finally, Natalie and Gavin kiss in the photo booth. I’m glad that we got that nonsense out of the way. Stalker guy steals the pictures from the booth. Brooke is pissed and chasing this guy down. Seriously, none of the dudes followed her. That’s fantastic. And then she bumps into Quinn and nothing happened. Super scary. Why are these friends just constantly telling Gavin and Natalie to fuck? I’m a horrible human being and that is not something that I would do. Gavin has left to try to get a toy for Natalie, and then just wanders off. Stalker is right next to him. STalker has one of those oversized mallets for the one carnival game. He is wrecking Gavin with it and caused the thingy to ring the bell. Gavin is the first to get got??? The fuck? I am sorely disappointed. Time to take a ride to the Deadlands.
Why is everybody just making out on the ride instead of enjoying the sights and sounds? You can make out any time. Get your priorities together fuckheads! Natalie goes on the ride by herself because Gavin didn’t return. Now her cart is stuck on the tracks. And the lights go out. This is the point where obviously I would say fuck this and bail. You have a flashlight on your phone. Wait, why aren’t there any carts following her? I get it, the ride is supposedly malfunctioning, but the carts were fairly close together. Also, was that Tony Todd’s voice? Oh yeah, stalker showed up.
So the 2 couples finish the ride and hear Natalie’s scream. They wait for her and Natalie comes out with the stalker riding her cart. But then another stalker and another and business finally picked up! The stalker is called The Other. We are at the halfway point and only 3 deaths. I’d say that people should skip to the Final Thoughts section to avoid anything more. I kinda want to avoid the rest of this.
The guys and girls split up. Of course, they split up. So the girls went down a hall of hands and they held onto Natalie so Taylor and Brooke exited, then they slid a door so that Natalie would go out the other exit. Okay, that was clever. Of course, the Stalker is on the other side of some glass scaring Natalie. How did Asher and Quinn get separated? I like the idea of being given flashlights that are on timers or something that can be controlled remotely. Okay, Asher is dead. Is Quinn going to be next? If so, this isn’t getting a 5 or higher. Brooke and Natalie are obnoxious together with their stupid necklace. If it made Captain Planet appear, I’d be more impressed. Natalie is left alone, the Stalker shows up and disappears.
After being in the bathroom for what seems like 5 minutes, she finally takes a piss and texts Gavin. She hears the phone go off and now we have boots. OHHHHH, and she’s trying to call 911, but no signal. That’s the game-changer. We get cell phones so now nobody ever has a signal. How creative. I like that they get security and he basically says that if you aren’t hurt and can’t identify him, then there’s nothing he can do. But the Stalker left some of the pictures of Natalie and Gavin.
There’s Tony Todd!!! He is sentencing Taylor to death and she plays along. She is going to be beheaded. Natalie thinks that the executioner is her stalker based on the shoes and she freaked out and is held back by security. The curtains close and Tony Todd holds onto a fake head. The executioner is really strapping Taylor in now. I am so happy that I may finally get what I want. Security is calling the cops on Natalie. Haha. The Executioner drops the blade but it only cuts her some. He needs to try again, perhaps. Must work faster Mr. Executioner. Taylor escaped. Goddamnit. The Stalking Executioner follows Taylor out and stabs her to death in front of everybody. Then he kills Quinn. Pure chaos. Security takes down one guy but it’s the wrong one. Down to Brooke and Natalie. Sigh. This movie is sexist.
The loudspeaker says to find the nearest exit. So the girls enter the Hell maze. Really? Just follow everybody else. Jesus, it’s not rocket science. The girls are running like morons, and the Stalker just broke the door handle. We have 18 minutes remaining, and that includes approximately 5 minutes of credits, just assuming. That leaves 13. Brooke will seemingly die within the next 3-5 minutes. Just speculating. We need the Final Girl showdown. The girls make it to the door and can’t leave.
Holy shit, the girls went and found weapons. I admit that I’m impressed by that. UGHHH, go slower, please. Drag this out even longer. Brooke lasted past 5 minutes, and nothing happened in those 5 minutes, at all. The Stalker attacks and cuts Brooke’s thigh… I think. They end up n a room full of cloaked bodies with white masks and the girls disguise themselves. Natalie finally makes her move, breaks her weapon and never grabbed his axe. Well, he just bopped her in the face with it while Brooke is trying to limp away and escape. That plan was a fail. The stalker catches up to Brooke and does the slow walk. Natalie surprises him and stabs him while never getting his weapon. The cops then come in. They find the guy’s pool of blood but not the Stalker.
The Stalker returns home and hears the news about what happened at Hell Fest. We see that he has a cupboard of masks and he put the mask in and the strip of pictures. He comes inside to see a girl sleeping on the couch. She wakes up and is happy that her daddy is home and he brought her a toy.
End Film
Final Thoughts
I would have been furious to have seen this in the theater. I liked Natalie and Brooke to an extent, but every other character was utterly useless to me. They waited way too long to kill Taylor and they killed Gavin way too soon. And I get why they did that because it would have also felt cliche to keep him until later. So I will say that they tried going for something a little different. So there, I gave some credit. The set pieces were really nice and well done. It was just a silly slasher, nothing to be taken seriously. I want to see more of Amy Forsyth. She is a talented actress. I just can’t imagine sitting down and wanting to watch this ever again. It may happen. It was a well-made film with a bad plot that we knew heading into this. I can’t fault it because it is exactly what I expected. I feel that this is in the high 4 range on the chance that I may rewatch it. The ending did nothing for me. I wanted to enjoy this more than I did.
Final Rating: 4.8
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- Tucker Tooley Entertainment
- Ingenuity Studios (visual effects)
- Valhalla Motion Pictures
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