This movie is exactly what a campy slasher horror film is supposed to be: a group of beautiful naughty morons, playing in places they shouldn't be, are chased and picked off one by one by evil monsters in the most hilarious ways possible. In fact, if you will recall the horror movie breakdown in Scream, then you'll know all of the elements of this film. It is totally predictable, but in a really fun and campy way. Was it a 'scary' movie? No. Was it a gory movie? Sometimes, but not so over-the-top that you find yourself cringing. (Antichist was far less "gory", but it was much more stomach churning and skin crawling than anything you'll see in this movie.) What this movie boils down to is that it is just a lot of fun. Yes, there are some dumb elements to the film, including some ridiculous exposition near the end of the movie that is really unnecessary -- we don't need to know why the monsters are there, and the reasoning cobbled together by the survivors at that point in the film is both curiously insightful and clearly made up on the fly by the 'writer' without any basis in traditional horror movie demonology. But ultimately, this is a fun little horror movie where you will find yourself wondering all along the way: which of the four scream queens is going to make it to the end, and will any of their boyfriends make it out alive? (Hint: the boyfriends never make it out alive unless they're also the villain...) A fun little movie for those that like a campy slasher film now and then.
Move to Skip: The Pledge
A cop film... kind of. The cop in the film (Jack Nicholson) is retired, although the criminal in the film (as far as we know) is real and not retired. The question that hovers over this film, in my mind, is whether or not there really is a real serial killer on the loose, or if it's just a figment of Nicholson's imagination. Unfortunately it's hard to tell if that's what the writer/director had in mind. We see an unidentified villain going about his deeds, but when you stop to think about it, we don't know for certain that it is really happening... it's just strongly and rather bluntly hinted that it is. If that tension was clearer, then perhaps there would have been more tension in the movie as a whole. Because we see the world, essentially, through Nicholson's eyes, there really isn't a whole lot of reason to doubt his sanity, which leaves out a lot of tension that could have been kind of interesting to see.
As it stands, this is just another cat and mouse movie. Nicholson is hunting down the bad guy while the bad guy is hunting down his next victim. While the setting is different, ultimately this is just like every other cop movie with the same theme: the good guys try to catch the bad guy before he can strike again, and time is running out. It's a tired story, although we can at least appreciate the attempt to throw in some interesting elements (i.e. the undeveloped tension as to whether or not the 'killer' is just an excuse for a retired cop to keep up the pursuit into his retirement).
All in all, kind of a slow film. It's nothing truly new, and there are a LOT of misses along the way (e.g. the 'love' interest, and the horribly dissatisfying ending). I was kind of disappointed, and I figure you probably will be too. As a side note, however, there is one shining point in this film... but it happens really early in: the most interesting part of this entire movie is the performance of Benico Del Toro as 'Toby' the Native American murder suspect. I mean, holy crap was he amazing! In the ten minutes or so that Del Toro was on the screen, he was at the same time the most convincing actor and the most sympathetic of all of the characters in the film. While I don't recommend watching the movie as a whole, I do recommend watching the first 20 minutes or so in order to see Del Toro's work.
