LogFAQs > #979841335

A better movie ends right after the twist. The final girl screams, Jasons mom starts with the whole dont let them escape mommy dialogue and then she just slashes her and thats it. Grandma Vorhees trying to engage in hand to hand combat is something a competent editor shouldve edited out or at least been like hey we dont need four versions of this exact same scene. Theres actually a lot of that stuff in here and you get the sense the scriptwriter had like five pages of story and they had to go back and start padding pretty heavily. Like they filmed the entire movie and were like this is eighteen minutes long, what do we do now? I feel like the whole arc of the guy who owned the camp is insane. Hes gone for most of the movie, but then we get a two minute long scene of him at the diner engaging in the worlds most painful small talk with the waitress, then his car gets stuck, then he rides with a police officer for a little bit, and then he dies literally one second after getting back at the camp. His entire contribution to the story is going hey oh hi what are you doing out here AH NO IM BEGIN STABBED and thats it. Its borderline a comedy beat and feels like something that should be in a parody horror movie.

Thats another thing that doesnt work about this as a horror film the kills. Slashers seemed to be trying their hardest to outdo each other each other during this era except for this one that handicapped itself by not being able to show the actual person doing the attacking. The whole movie here is predicated on the twist, which means for the first two thirds almost all of the kills occur essentially offscreen. I was getting ready for the rewatch and specifically remembered the Kevin Bacon death but was like why cant I remember anything else that happens? and it turns out thats because most of the death scenes werent included. You have a couple of sloppy ones from the killers POV where it feels like the cameraman is about to drop the camera. But then there are a lot that are just straight up cut away before you get to the good bits. Im getting slasher blue balls here, and a couple of these dont even have the prerequisite weapon going up on an unsuspecting victim you get from other bad horror movies. It is just a guy going into a room going HELLO HELLO and then hey lets go show people playing Monopoly for a couple of minutes because filming a good death scene is hard and I dont want to do it.

Speaking of the Monopoly scene, something that really tickled me is they were too fucking lazy to film it in such a way so you couldnt see the dice they were rolling. A 12! I get to go again! one of the girls yells while you can clearly see a two on one of the dice on screen. I actually thought the camera work here was borderline competent at times, which is more than I can say for a lot of the movie. Like the way the camera filmed certain scenes so you would think something was coming that wasnt, or putting things from the killers POV and then giving you other scenes that look like theyre supposed to be from the killers POV but theyre not they do a decent job subverting expectations at times and I went back and forth between liking it and hating it. Theres some things here that are sort of clever but then a lot that feels kind of dumb so it is hard to ever feel to impressed for too long.

It doesnt help that the cast here is awful. I found myself wondering about halfway through the movie if you were allowed to have a film with only supporting roles. I didnt know anything about any of these characters and could barely remember their names. I get that a lot of these slasher films are just groups of meat bags here to serve as machete pin cushions, but at least give me enough to know who the hell these people are supposed to be. Like, ok theres Peppermint Patty, the girl with nipples, the least funny comic relief character in the history of film, Kevin Bacon for some reason, uh, another guy? And one more girl? I think? Not a single one of them can act. If you had told me this was all of these actors first film and also all of these actors last film, I wouldve said good, Im glad someone stopped them. I checked Wikipedia because I was curious, and the note on the casting process was Cunningham admits that he was not looking for "great actors," but anyone that was likable, and appeared to be a responsible camp counselor. Why? Why was that what he was looking for? Im worried he was actually trying to start an actual camp, and then pivoted to a movie when he found out it might be more profitable.

I think, ultimately, this is a film that is let down by its budget. You notice it most with the actors who were a group of people that were willing to act for sandwiches, but it is every where. The script, the filming, the fact they dont do special effects with the kills and keep doing uh ok well this person is dying trust us cutaways, the whole thing feels cheap. And poorly made. This is a poor mans version of Halloween, a terrible slasher movie in an era of great ones. How did this find that cult following a lot of others missed? Im not sure. This is a movie that is almost interesting because of its twist but not interesting for any other reason you can think of. I borderline hated this, which I definitely did not expect going into it. Remember everyone: dont go see horror movies with girls you have crushes on. It does dumb things to your brain.