Arthouse Thriller “Byzantium” Is Worth Sinking Your Teeth Into

Slasher StudiosByzantium

byzantium-poster

This Slasher Studios review comes all the way from the Netherlands as Ferdi Akkulak takes a look at Byzantium. Make sure to check out his video clips and subscribe to his Youtube Channel for more.

There was a lot of buzz surrounding the release of the movie Byzantium. It’s a small, indie arthouse horror movie about vampires. It has a talented cast and also a talented crew behind the camera so there was obviously a lot of anticipation for this movie. To be honest, I never read anything about this movie but I did find the title for a few months in the release schedule and I think that in my opinion the title is pretty awesome. ‘Byzantium’. What can that possibly promise as a movie title without going further into the plot. When I eventually saw the trailer I was pretty interested in this movie, it has its share of good red blood, an amazing female cast, great direction, stunning cinematography and of course a really original storyline. I could definitely tell that there were a few acting performances seen in the trailer that needs to be having an eye kept on it!

This amazing cast features the likes of: Saoirse Ronan. A young actress that has already proven herself as a truly fantastic actress at early age for her Oscar-nominated turn in the movie Atonement in 2007. I have not seen that movie however. I did see Saoirse Ronan star however in movies like: The Way Back and The Host. Two great movies where she pulled off some amazing performances. I really need to see her in Hanna yet, a lot of praise went to her performance in that movie. She’s definitely an actress to look out for in the near future! Next up is the lovely and beautiful Gemma Arterton. A truly talented and stunning actress. I really like her in every movie I have seen her so far in. Those movies are: Quantum of Solace, The Boat That Rocked, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and recently in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters. I really look forward seeing her in Tamara Drewe, I won that movie on DVD yesterday so I need to see that movie ASAP. A really beautiful and amazing actress! Also starring in Byzantium are actors like: Sam Riley and Caleb Landry Jones (I have seen him as ‘Banshee’ in X-Men: First Class and also in Contraband).

Byzantium is directed by Neil Jordan. This director is known for directing the very famous ‘Interview with the Vampire’. A pretty well known and cult classic of a movie I believe, I have not seen it yet but I do own the DVD. A lot of the promotion was all about that the movie was directed by the filmmakers of ‘Interview with the Vampire’ so that was probably a smart move. I think that considering how well known he is with fans and critics that he is the right guy to direct a movie like Byzantium (which is also about vampires but this time its about female vampires). I can already tell by seeing that trailer that it has beautiful cinematography and great camera shots. It’s very exciting to see what the final result will be like. He has a good project in his hands, that’s a given!

Byzantium is released by IFC in America. A distributor known for releasing indie films in theatres. In Holland this movie gets released by Cinéart. The running time of the movie is 118 minutes which is roughly 2 hours. This has me wondering and more excited of how this movie is gonna turn out to be. When I look at that running time it might mean that a lot of character development will get attention but also makes me wonder how much blood there will be in the movie or if there will be any action in Byzantium. I am pretty happy with this running time so let’s hope the movie won’t bore me. Byzantium was made for a reported £8 million pound. Not a figure for what that might be in dollars but I think that would be around $12.2 million dollar. It’s a healthy budget in my opinion, they were not over doing it with the effect obviously and went really low budget, glad that was the case here. The movie has been released in America in Limited Release on June 28th 2013 and did very modest to bad at the box-office. It has to this day only grossed a small $75,566 which is not anything to write home about, especially considering its budget. Maybe it was a smarter move for them to release this movie to a bigger audience and see how it went. Reviews have been fairly positive for Byzantium. It has a Fresh score of 60% Positive on Rotten Tomatoes meaning that more critics loved it than hated it. It did better in foreign countries though but it only saw the light in 3 other countries than America. It made most of its money in the United Kingdom which makes sense. It also made a tiny margin of money in my country (Holland) but really something to be cheering about. It was released in theatres in my country on July 11th 2013 but in a handful of theatres, mostly arthouse with some major movie theatres. It was only shown in one theatre in my city so that means just how small this movie was released. Reviews here have been overly positive and made it look better than most of the released that opened that week. It didn’t have strong buzz or anything but did have its audience. Not box office wise though… It did very bad at the box office in my country with only having a spot in the top 20 for one week only… It disappeared from the chart after that.

I finally was able to see Byzantium in theatres on July 24th 2013 (roughly two weeks after it got released and the last possible day to see this movie in a theatre in my city and I loved it! I am not sure if my expectations were actually really high before I saw the movie cause I was blown away! This is a movie that works for a lot of reasons and for a lot of different genre lovers. It has the perfect casting (the two lovely ladies are obviously the draw here, two amazing acting performances), amazingly directed by Neil Jordan, breathtaking cinematography, a surprise amount of blood for an arthouse horror about vampires, a good soundtrack, just the right kind of mood, amazing settings, locations, costume design and of course a script that interested me from beginning to end. This movie is strong and riveting and definitely not one that is forgotten very soon. Also the genre elements are amazing! Drama, Horror, Thriller, Suspense and Action. It all blended so nicely and made it into one good old fashioned smoothie called Byzantium! I do believe due to its reviews and box office life that this movie is underrated, big time! A lot of people obviously overlooked this one and compared it to fellow ‘vampire’ movie Twilight. Which is a really shitty comparison, especially if there is a quote on the poster that says ‘Twilight for grown ups… A must see.’. It’s not even a legit comparison so why make it anyway. Ridiculous. The acting performances of both Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton were both stellar. They were exactly the opposite of each other and that made them blend in better in the human world. They made a great pair of mother and daughter. It was all very believable and realistic! In fact, I think these ladies deserve some Award Season love for their portrayals in Byzantium. Neil Jordan did one hell of a great job with the directing, this makes me wanna pop in the DVD of Interview with the Vampire into the DVD Player ASAP. I really like his style of filming, it’s really phenomenal. Each shot has its own story.

I believe that fans of a good old fashioned horror story can lift their heart up with Byzantium. It’s incredible and outright crazy what the share of blood was in this movie. I am talking about two decapitations, lots of stabbing with pointy nails and a lot of blood sucking. It worked for me, in fact they was the blood was showed to the audience was really in a unique way, it had a stylish way of showing the blood but also managed to be total brutal to look at. Now that is an accomplisment. The drama in this movie felt really refreshing to me and actually made me care and root for the two leading ladies. They just had amazing chemistry as mother and daughter that you just want everything to end up allright with them. Character development was really a hard task for a movie like this but they really pulled it off and I was left impressed. One downgrade: the movie had some pacing issues that were kind of confusing. It’s kind of weird sometimes how they went from present to past and told some extra stories but in the end it all made sense to me.

Byzantium is one of those rare arthouse horror that knows everything from the genre and gives it a nice and refreshing twist to it. The movie had some comedic moments that were really cool, I also think that the suspense and mood is something that builds up very slow but good in some scenes. The cinematography is so powerful and really gives you a good look at past and present. The movie also manages to be some sort of costume drama at a lot of scenes and that is incredible and blends in just perfect to the story and the other genres that are in this movie.

I can recommened Byzantium on all the factors I mentioned about and you will still be left surprised. It’s a movie that has the right ingredients to become a cult classic and have a massive following to it. It just needs to find just the right time for that. But as we all know, time will tell. I am definitely getting this extraordinary and special movie on DVD and it will stay in my collection forever! Such an original and great movie, I was impressed! The ending is really sad, especially if you have witnessed the development of the characters very closely. A perfect movie that has everything in it that I simply love!

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Horror Movie Posters: “The Haunting” (1960) & (1999)

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Fourteen years ago today, “The Haunting” remake opening in theaters everywhere and was a huge box office hit making nearly $200 million worldwide. It stands to date as one of the highest grossing horror remakes of all time although many critics were less than impressed. Today we are looking at the posters from the original classic “The Haunting” and comparing them with the posters from the remake. Which poster do you like the best and do you feel that the remake deserves more respect than it originally received upon release?

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Original Cinema Quad Poster - Movie Film Posters

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Not Quite Horror: “End of Watch” (2012)

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Not Quite Horror contains reviews of films not traditionally considered horror films. By analyzing them as horror films (identifying the monster, discussing the shared worry for the audience and the main characters, and understanding the depth of horror available to the viewer), who knows? There’s more than one way to watch a movie.

End of Watch (2012)

The Monsters: A world of criminals so ruthless and violent they more resemble post-apocalyptic scavengers or dutiful cultists than the stars of a nightly news report.

Police officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña) patrol the streets of Los Angeles with courageous energy. Soon, the violence of the streets begins to test their resolve. They first stumble onto a human trafficking ring. Then, they enter a normal-seeming house to find themselves face to face with a mass of dead bodies. Eventually, even our heroes must realize they cannot hope to survive the hordes amassing against them.

The Horror: This gritty found-footage film is bleak enough to make categorizing it as a horror film an easy task. However, a very specific reading of End of Watch as a missing piece from another horror film makes the movie even more rewarding. This film can be read as the story of any couple of police officers from any horror film, in the same way that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead fleshes out minor characters from Hamlet.

Taylor and Zavala aren’t really heroes or villains, though the film depicts them in both heroic and villainous situations. They simply try to do their jobs, even when their job becomes hopeless.

The Shared Fate: Our culture may seem adaptable to every person’s goal for individuality, but it isn’t. Few of us are heroes, and most of us learn to be content with our small roles in the grand scheme of things.

— I am indebted to Noel Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror for his ideas on defining horror, as well as John Skipp and Craig Spector’s article “Death’s Rich Pageantry, or Skipp & Spector’s Handy-Dandy Splatterpunk Guide to the Horrors of Non-horror Film” in Cut! Horror Writers on Horror Film for a similar idea.–

–Axel Kohagen

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Made For TV Horror: “Stephen King’s IT” (1990) Review

Slasher StudiosStephen King's IT

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We have a brand new Slasher Studios review today from author Jayme K. Check it out below and make sure to like Jayme’s Facebook page and buy a copy of his books. Support indie writing!

Stephen King’s IT premiered on ABC in the fall of 1990 and from that moment onward, many children’s psyches were scarred for life and kids across the country developed a fear of clowns. Some older horror fans may cite Poltergeist as the reason for their coulrophobia, but for my generation–it was all about Pennywise the Clown.

This two-part television movie is probably the most well known and well liked of Stephen King’s adaptations, but 23 years later–does it hold up?
The answer is no. It does not hold up. As a matter of fact, some parts of it are outright laughable. But in 1990, this was scary shit.

Seven childhood friends must reunite and return to their hometown of Derry, Maine to put an end an unstoppable evil force that has begun feeding off of the town’s children for the first time in 30 years.

The television movie, adapted from King’s bestselling novel of the same name, does a pretty decent job of adapting the most fundamental elements of the story but (of course) is completely and utterly watered down in comparison to the book itself. I can’t fault it for not having lepers offering blowjobs, or child gangbangs in the sewer, or a refrigerator full of dead pets (and truthfully, who would want to see any those things?) This was ABC after all–the same network that brought us Family Matters. Considering the budget and content limitations director Tommy Lee Wallace faced, IT is not a bad movie, and certainly not a bad horror movie.

As anyone who has watched the two-parter could tell you, the strongest half is the first 90 minutes. The seven child actors (Jonathan Brandis, Seth Green, Ben Heller, Adam Faraizl, Emily Perkins, Marlon Taylor, and Brandon Crane) really bring their A-game and that’s rare to see in any film. They truly show up the seven adult actors (Richard Thomas, John Ritter, Harry Anderson, Denis Christopher, Annette O’Toole, Richard Masur, and Tim Reid) in every way, shape, and form. The two actors that steal the show, however, are Tim Curry as Pennywise and Jarred Blancard as the local bully, Henry Bowers. Everyone goes on and on about how Tim Curry is flawless in the title role, and don’t get me wrong–he is. He’s the best thing about this movie. But Blancard doesn’t get enough credit for his turn as Henry Bowers. He is perfect in the role and absolutely believable.

The movie has its fair share of flaws–such as its use of the book’s lackluster ending, poor special effects, and timeline inconsistencies. But ultimately I find these things excusable. It’s my belief that a good horror film, over time, does one of two things. It either becomes timelessly frightening or a parody of itself. And IT effectively, and unintentionally, has transcended into parody. That’s not to say that there aren’t creepy moments, or fine examples of acting, but if you watch the movie lightheartedly and go into it knowing that some moments will be…less than impressive…you’ll ultimately find yourself enjoying IT a lot.

–Jayme K.

4

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Not Quite Horror: “The Breakfast Club” (1985)

Slasher Studios*Not Quite Horror

breakfast-club

Not Quite Horror contains reviews of films not traditionally considered horror films. By analyzing them as horror films (identifying the monster, discussing the shared worry for the audience and the main characters, and understanding the depth of horror available to the viewer), who knows? There’s more than one way to watch a movie.

The Breakfast Club (1985)

The Monsters: This fiendish psychological thriller sports four monsters, all of whom use deception to manipulate and mild-mannered high school student Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall).

Johnson is no match for the two male students, John Bender and Andrew Clark (Judd Nelson and Emilio Estevez), and two female students, Claire Standish and Allison Reynolds (Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy), sharing his suspension. These four developed street smarts within their social circles.

The Horror: Forced to attend a Saturday in-school suspension, Brian is easily outmaneuvered by his more socially savvy peers. These four students lead him on, dope him up, and then trick him into completing their punishment paper-writhing assignment.

As these four students leave, paired up into new-found relationships, Johnson leaves with nothing except the delusion he has been accepted by a larger group of friends. When time moves forward and Johnson realizes he has been duped . . . can he survive this blow to his sense of self? After all, his reason for being on suspension involved bringing a weapon to school.

The Shared Fate: People leave high school and move into adulthood convinced they moved past their problems. However, how often do scars from our adolescent and teen years resurface? Who hasn’t made a decision, at work or at home, as a way of fixing high school failures?

Hopefully we are aware of the importance of our actions, and not brainwashed victims like Brian Johnson.

— I am indebted to Noel Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror for his ideas on defining horror, as well as John Skipp and Craig Spector’s article “Death’s Rich Pageantry, or Skipp & Spector’s Handy-Dandy Splatterpunk Guide to the Horrors of Non-horror Film” in Cut! Horror Writers on Horror Film for a similar idea.–

–Axel Kohagen

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Adam Green’s “Frozen” (2010) Chills With Undenible Tension & Suspense

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Roman as Brandon

In the horror world we have all come accustomed to to seeing masked killers, zombies, ghosts, and others. Very few of these genre films these days can considered chilling or terrifying. Director Adam Green of Hatchet returns to the director’s chair with a horror film that bring fear into the real world with his film Frozen. Just how terrifying can this non-typical horror film be?

We follow three friends who get together for a Sunday of skiing. As their day of fun come near an end, Parker (Emma Bell), her boyfriend Dan (Kevin Zegers), and Dan’s best friend Joe (Shawn Ashmore) decide to convince the life attendant to let them go one more round. Confusion occurs and the three friends ends up getting stuck on the lift. As time goes by, the three realize they won’t be getting rescued any time soon. Their fear begins to escalate as they have to suffer the cold, the pack of hungry wolves beneath them, their unknown fates, and at some points…each other.

At first glance, Frozen may not seem like the type of film that one may call conventional scary. I admit I didn’t think this would be that scary either, and I thought I would be mentally yelling at the screen the whole time. But as I began to watch it, the chills began to set in. The situations the characters find themselves in during the ordeal is so heart pounding, and sometimes cringeworthy that you can’t even fathom what it would be like if you were in their situation. On top of this, it also hits on an emotional level. There is a moment where Parker has a breakdown about what will happen to her dog if she ends up dying. Being a dog-lover this really hit me hard, and Emma Bell’s performance in this scene is so spot on and heart-wrenching. Shawn Ashmore and Kevin Zegers also deliver great performances. As the friends are the stuck on the lift, there are moments where they take out their anger and frustration on each other, and you feel the tension between them all. The acting is the biggest thing I praise the film for. This, hands down,
has the best acting I’ve ever seen in a horror film. The actors get so into their characters, you almost think that we are actually watching them in a real situation, watching their fears and suppressed emotion rise, and you’re rooting for them all to survive. Adam Green has quickly become one of my favorite horror directors. He knows his audience and knows how to get under their skin. Frozen definitely isn’t a conventional horror film, but it brings a new level of fear to the genre by giving something real to be afraid of.

–Cody Landman

4

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Not Quite Horror: “Heckler” (2007)

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BHE3151-COVER

Not Quite Horror contains reviews of films not traditionally considered horror films. By analyzing them as horror films (identifying the monster, discussing the shared worry for the audience and the main characters, and understanding the depth of horror available to the viewer), who knows? There’s more than one way to watch a movie.

Heckler (2007)

The Monsters: The audience.

These monsters hide in darkness and strike anonymously. Jamie Kennedy and director Michael Addis attempt to shine light on this dangerous mob, but by the time the film is finished, it’s clear they are more scared of the audience than the audience will ever be scared of them.

The Horror: Audiences are everywhere, and they’re capable of seriously damaging human beings. Mostly, audiences harbor and encourage pesky comments and insults. Fuel those hecklers with alcohol and greater encouragement and they may even embarrass themselves on stage.

Off stage, critics can turn destroying art into a comedic assassination, ruining hard work for cheap laughs and small amounts of attention.

The Shared Fate: Heckler tries to turn the tables on hecklers by putting them in front of the camera and holding them accountable.

Unfortunately, the movie Heckler fails because the film itself is unprotected from the heckling and criticism it condemns. By trying to squash an annoyance, the film has instead proven how powerful an anonymous voice in the crowd can be.

Let’s all hope hecklers weren’t paying close attention. They often aren’t.

— I am indebted to Noel Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror for his ideas on defining horror, as well as John Skipp and Craig Spector’s article “Death’s Rich Pageantry, or Skipp & Spector’s Handy-Dandy Splatterpunk Guide to the Horrors of Non-horror Film” in Cut! Horror Writers on Horror Film for a similar idea.–

–Axel Kohagen

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Leaving A Mark: “Fingerprints” (2007) Review

Slasher StudiosFingerprints

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The film starts out with flashback showing bus-full of young children on a dark stormy night on their way back from a class trip. As the parents of the children wait for them by the train tracks, they see a train coming from the distance. As the parents frantically try to warn the bus driver of the oncoming train, the bus keeps driving. The parents then watch in terror as the train collides with the bus, killing everyone inside.

Cut to modern day and we see Crystal (Kristin Cavallari) is the one telling the story to her sister Melanie (Leah Pipes) who is fresh out of rehab after a near-fatal drug overdose that took the life of her boyfriend. Crystal then tells Melanie of the legend that if you park your car in neutral on the train tracks of the accident, the ghosts of the children will push the car across the tracks. Melanie laughs about the urban legend that has surrounded the small town that her family has just moved into. Upon arriving home she is greeted by her father (Darryl Cox), who is happy to have her home, her mother (Ginger Gilmartin) on the other hand isn’t pleased. During her first week at school, Melanie struggles with not only being new, but also being the talk of the school regarding her stay at rehab. She attracts attention from the snobby head cheerleader, Carolyn (Ashley Wyatt), and the class jerk Mitch (Andrew Lawrence), but also the attention of Penn (Josh Henderson), who has a dark past of his own. On top of all of her high school drama, Melanie begins to see a young girl wandering around the train tracks area. But as the sightings increase, so does the body count. When no one in her family, her school shrink (Lou Diamond Phillips), and the town sheriff believes her and she begins to be blamed for the disappearances, Melanie believes there’s more to the town legend than she’s been lead to believe. It’s now up to Melanie to find out the truth behind the legend and find out who’s behind the killings before she and her loved ones become the next targets.

Directed by Harry Basil, Fingerprints is an indie horror film that won the award at the New York City Horror Film Festival for Best Feature. We are given a young hot cast featuring Leah Pipes as our lead girl (who later went on to star in Sorority Row), and she does a solid job at it. Former Laguna Beach star Kristin Cavallari stars as Melanie’s popular cheerleader sister Crystal, who really doesn’t do that bad of a job here, but also isn’t given a whole lot to do besides look hot. Josh Henderson also isn’t given much to to do either as the love interest to Melanie, but still gives it his all. Former Disney star Andrew Lawrence really breaks his Disney image as Mitch, the angry, over-sexed, drunk bad boy. Ginger Gilmartin also leaves her mark on the film as one of the most AWFUL mothers in film history, you are just waiting for her to die. The movie has some really over-the-top moments, some mildly weak dialogue, and underused characters, but that didn’t stop this viewer from enjoying the story, and watching all of the secrets unfold. Backed by a solid performance from Leah Pipes, and nice mystery/supernatural/slasher story, and some nice kills for a low-budget film, this is one indie horror film that I really enjoyed.

–Cody Landman

2.5

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Christmas in July: “Silent Night, Deadly Night” (1984) Review

Slasher StudiosSilent Night Deadly Night

silentnight-730866-767888

This notorious Christmas slasher hit a handful of theatres at the very ass-end of the early 80s slasher craze (just before the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series would simultaneously revive it and beat it to death again), and it arrived in a shitstorm of yuletide controversy that had church groups and parents picketing outside theatres and screaming bloody murder on national news broadcasts. Of course, this is the kind of fabulous publicity money can’t buy, but the distributor (Tri-Star, who had a notably troublesome time with horror product all through the 80s) caved in and quickly yanked the posters, finally about a week later yanking the film itself. The fantastic poster was probably the main offender, as it featured Santa disappearing down a chimney with an axe, an image which no doubt went over like a dick-shaped fruitcake with the soccer moms who caught sight of it at the mall.

Of course, thanks almost entirely to the outbursts of its detractors, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT would go on to become one of the biggest money-makers of the year when it was finally released on videotape, raked in a sleigh full of cash on cable and spawned no less than four sequels (so far). Bottom line, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is a mediocre slasher movie that would have absolutely sank like a cast-iron wreath after one week in theatres, rented for a couple of weeks on home video and been forever relegated to cut-out bins at drugstores. So the delicious irony in all of this is that the church groups and parent protestors single-handedly turned their monster into a monster hit.

Perhaps SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT isn’t so much a terrible slasher movie as it is simply a bland one. Its reputation stems almost solely from the controversy created by people who never even saw the picture. This is not to say it doesn’t have its moments (intentional and unintentional), but most fans who finally saw the actual movie on video rightfully wondered what all the shouting was about.

In the film’s admittedly tasteless and disturbing opener, young Billy sees his parents murdered (complete with sexual assault on the mother, in an extra bit of naughtiness I could easily have lived without) by a thief in a Santa suit, and winds up spending the rest of his childhood at an orphanage where he is tormented by the iron-fisted Mother Superior. Now a teen, Billy (the impossibly good-looking Robert Brian Wilson) gets a job at a local store, but it’s obvious the events of his childhood left a little crazy on his face, and he eventually snaps. In a psychological profile only found in slasher movies, our hero Billy becomes the villain and decides to don a Santa suit and go on a killing spree.

The fact is, all of that is a lot more complicated than this genre requires, and having our hero turn into the villain and not providing the audience with a core final girl or boy really depletes any suspense or tension the filmmakers might have created using the potentially effective Christmas atmosphere. A couple of central characters tormented by an unknown killer in a Santa suit could have made for some simple chills. Instead, the screenplay is compelled to provide a story no one wants to hear and the talent involved can’t support.

The direction by Charles Sellier is flat and obvious. The Christmas season makes a wonderfully atmospheric backdrop for a horror movie, but Sellier doesn’t take advantage of any of the colorful opportunities, and for the most part keeps his camera nailed to the floor; everything is presented bluntly and in the foreground. The dialogue is, of course, not very good, but thankfully the film gets some mileage out of a few simple lines (after seeing the film, you’ll be hard-pressed to avoid shouting “Naughty!” or “Punish!” with B-movie glee). The cast is made up mostly of amateurs who suit the project fine, and hunky Robert Brian Wilson is so miscast and awkward in the role as our hero and villain he somewhat unintentionally becomes a memorable movie character.

Truthfully, though it’s obviously not a good movie, it has enough moments to keep most genre fans diverted. Linnea Quigley (along with both her always-on-display Quigleys) has the most memorable scene in the movie, where her character (in what seems to be a bit of a nod to SALEM’S LOT) is impaled on antlers. There’s some decent splatter that’s artlessly but efficiently on display, and the scenes with the hateful Mother Superior do manage to squeeze out a little bit of drama and tension late in the movie.

It’s just that, with that awesome poster, all the controversy, and all the possibilities for a great atmospheric seasonal slasher, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is just a mildly entertaining direct-to-video feature that should have disappeared a long time ago. The whole plot should have been dropped, Wilson should have been kept shirtless under the mistletoe and terrorized by an unknown slasher, Linnea Quigley should have played the naked slut who finally gets it good in the end, and it all should have been directed by someone who knows what to do with a slasher movie.

But there aren’t that many shopping days left ’til Christmas. SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT plays like that bright, tempting package under the tree that you couldn’t wait to open, only to discover after all that time it was just socks.

This review comes courtesy of Kaptain Killdare’s Spooky Movie Reviews. Like the page on Facebook for some more killer reviews.

2

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