Short Attention Span Review - Hell Fest (2018)

Short Attention Span Review - Hell Fest (2018)

There is a really sound idea at the heart of this festive fright flick.  The pitch hinges on a deranged slasher running amok at a themed event for horror movie lovers like your friendly neighborhood blogger here.  The hardest parts of executing this premise should have been realizing the villain and the setting.  And yet, while the picture kills it in both of those categories, it has two glaring weaknesses that really took a lot of the wind out of my sails.  First off, like any genre, horror is at its best when the characters are involving.  You can make a bad story remarkable if it features compelling characters, and the common link between most great stories is a great cast of characters.  It doesn't work the other way around.  This is one of many instances wherein a groovy premise and impressive technical merits are undermined by a core group of players that don't capture our hearts.  I just didn't care a lot about most of the characters in Hell Fest, to include the leads, and that robbed the film of so much of its impact.  That and one ill-advised blunder really tarnished my experience.  There's a scene that starts off really great in a funhouse and actually stands as one of Hell Fest's most frightening sequences.  However, it turns out to be a cheap scare born of a lapse in logic that shatters every ounce of plausibility.  Seriously, it's beyond stupid, and as cool as the moment that preceded this gaffe was, the lack of a better explanation should have sent the filmmakers back to the drawing board.  Or the cutting room.  For me, moments like this can totally ruin a movie.  Now, I'm still going to give this one some credit because the killer and the setting were so dope, and there were several scary setpieces that were wicked intense.  The makers of Hell Fest did enough to entertain me, but they shot themselves in the foot with lukewarm characters and that wretched scene that was utterly devoid of anything remotely resembling reason.

Final Grade: C

A lot like Blood Fest in that it's a cheeky slasher movie built upon the idea of a themed event for fright fans going awry, this one suffers from one massive lapse in logic and a cast that is pretty damn run-of-the-mill.

Short Attention Span Review - Blood Fest (2018)

Short Attention Span Review - Blood Fest (2018)

Blood Fest is one of those fast-paced and energetic flicks that aim to pay homage to the slasher sub-genre while finding a few new wrinkles to explore along the way.  But there's no concerted effort to deliver some sort of classic, to join the ranks of Halloween or Scream.  And that, my friends, is a good thing.  In my humble opinion, there's no better way to muck up this beloved sub-genre than to start thinking franchise and legacy before you put one rock-solid film in the can.   Blood Fest has no illusions of grandeur, but it wants to shake and move from the first shot all the way to the last.  It peppers us with diabolical kills, laughs, cool characters to spare, and some gnarly sets and shenanigans.  It works in most of these areas far more often than it falters, and it really clicks where those characters are concerned.  I liked all of our principals, with a secondary character who was a misunderstood actor who had portrayed a slasher himself being my favorite.  This gave the picture a bit more importance than it may have warranted otherwise, and each kill hit me pretty hard.  In the average slasher flick, there are one or two characters you dig, a handful of characters you could care less about, and at least one schmuck who can't get offed soon enough.  This picture has a schmuck, to be sure, but beyond that, I really liked everyone else mired in this quirky struggle for survival.  The set-up worked, the effects were quality, the score was on point, and the talent in front of the camera and their peers toiling behind the camera all earned their pay.  Was it a great horror movie?  No, but that was never in the cards.  Was it a fun slasher flick that I can easily recommend to all of my readers?  Damn straight.  Job well done, Blood Fest.

Final Grade: B+

Bloody, fun, witty, and (most importantly) populated by likable characters, Blood Fest is a worthwhile slasher flick that this particular horror junkie slept on for far too long.