Released: September 2018
Director: Gregory Plotkin
Run Time: 89 Minutes
Rated R
Distributor: Lionsgate Studios
Genre: Horror
Cast:
Amy Forsyth: Natalie
Reign Edwards: Brooke
Bex Taylor-Klaus: Taylor
Stephen Conroy: The Other
Christian James: Quinn
Roby Attal: Gavin
Matt Mercurio: Asher
The slasher film is one of the biggest staples in the horror genre. It usually involves a group of nubile teenagers/college kids being stalked and murdered by a single villain. There are a large number of slasher films available today: A Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, and Hatchet just to name a few. Most of these are generally well done, but they tend to follow a very similar pattern. Most slasher movies follow a certain order in which they kill their victims. It usually starts with the boyfriend, then the promiscuous girl, stoner, and so on and so forth. Most films in this sub-genre are pretty predictable. Every once in a while you get a film like Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon that shakes up the genre a bit, but those films are few and far in between. Having a predictable slasher film isn’t always a bad thing, and it make for a hell of a time at parties. I personally don’t mind a predictable slasher as long as it is done well. There were two slasher movies that hit theaters last year that garnered the most attention: Halloween and Hell Fest.
Here’s the setup: A group of college friends get together and go to Hell Fest, a Halloween-themed attraction that goes from town to town. They go to this thing to get the crap scared out of them, all the while not knowing that there is a serial killer among them that picks them off one by one. That’s it. That’s every slasher film in existence in a nutshell with some slight variations on locations and age group. Let’s face facts, shall we? Nobody goes to a film like this for the story. It’s just a loose thread tying all the kills together. Pretty simple, yes? Doesn’t bother me at all as long as the tension is real and the kills are satisfactory. Let’s talk about the setting first. Having a horror film set in a horror-themed attraction with haunted houses is actually a really cool idea. There’s a lot of fun in the unpredictability of a place like that, especially in a horror film. In the hands of a better film-maker like Adam Green or Alex Aja, Hell Fest could have been something really wild. Unfortunately, Hell Fest is another film in a long line of “run-of-the-mill” slasher movies.
To craft a solid slasher movie, you need tension. To get that tension, you first need to be able to connect with the characters on the screen. If you connect with them in some fashion, it could allow to want them to survive the night. That is one of the biggest issues with Hell Fest: Most of the characters are poorly written and conceived. In fact, most of them are pretty annoying. The only one that I managed to connect with the slightest was Natalie, mostly because the character is as much of a cynic as I am when it comes to the idea of a haunted house attraction. So, if the characters aren’t worth rooting for, what else do you have? The villain? He’s faceless guy in a mask #76. It’s one thing to have a faceless villain that is completely unstoppable. Michael from Halloween is a perfect example of how to get that kind of a villain right. The villain in Hell Fest is a cheap knock-off. He’s not awful, but he’s not one that you’re going to be remembering in the same breath as Freddy, Jason, Michael, or Leatherface. The acting in the film isn’t awful, actually. Some of the scares that these characters encounter look like the real deal and it’s pretty convincing that they’re scared, it’s just that they aren’t written well enough for us to care about them.
One of the most important things in a slasher movie is the body count. I know it sounds morbid, but when it comes to slashers, you would expect a decent number of folks getting offed left and right, and that’s another area in which Hell Fest falters. For a film that’s set in a horror-based amusement park, there’s not a ton of carnage that you would expect from a film called Hell Fest. Granted, some slasher movies don’t have very high killing streaks, but there’s usually a good amount. In Hell Fest, I counted maybe 5 or 6 kills. The other side of the body count issue is the quality of the kills. I’m not expecting torture porn here, this isn’t Saw, but some of the kills here are not very spectacular. There’s a couple that are pretty good, especially with one guy who gets stabbed in the eye with an over-sized medical needle. Those ones get me every time, so that gets a pass. A guy also gets his head crushed with a giant mallet which isn’t bad. Everything else though is kind of lame. The music by Bear McCreary is pretty damned good, though.
Is there anything that Hell Fest does particularly well? It’s certainly atmospheric. Setting the film in a horror-theme amusement park is actually pretty creative and the set designs are incredible. I didn’t see a single CGI shot in this film, so most of it was pretty practical, and that’s always a good thing in a slasher movie. The performances aren’t half-bad, even if the characters aren’t particularly memorable, and Tony Todd always adds a wonderful sense of macabre to any horror film. It’s well-framed and the shots are pretty damn good. Unfortunately, the film is yet another generic slasher film that you probably won’t remember after a week. It’s not an awful film, and it’s far from the worst slasher film I’ve ever seen, but it doesn’t do enough to stand out from the rest of the pack.
My Final Verdict: This is one amusement park that should stay closed: 6/10.