Hell Fest (2018)

The Slasher marathon continues with a new movie that came out just last year. I had some hope after hearing some good buzz about this masked killer stalking victims at a giant haunted house/amusement park. What a great setting for a slasher movie! Did the movie live up to the hype? Spoiler… it did not.

After an opening with an annoyed girl being bothered by a masked guy in a haunted house who eventually kills her, we get introduced to our main characters. Natalie is back in town visiting over Halloween and has plans to meet up with her best friend Brooke. It is then that she finds out Brooke has a new roommate, Taylor, whom she really doesn’t like. The three have tickets for Hell Fest and are heading out with some boys, including one that Natalie has a crush on.

Now that we have the setup done the six of them head off to Hell Fest, which is a giant amusement park/haunted house with multiple mazes and masked actors to scare them. by accident Natalie gets the attention of the killer, called the Other, who starts following the group around. Eventually as they separate, he begins to kill them off until he is exposed, and security is called. Of course, they don’t catch him, and we are given what I think was supposed to be a spooky ending that I really didn’t care for. Movie over.

This has missed opportunity written all over it. The setting was amazing, and they do a great job creating a creepy atmosphere. The different mazes and costumes were fun to see, and we even get a tiny cameo from Tony Todd as the emcee of a public execution. There was so much potential here. But the story gets bogged down showing us so much of the park and the characters being silly that the killer never gets established and the story never starts rolling. The movie is heavily backloaded on the kills which makes for a very uneven pace. That brings me to another issue with the plot and writing.

The killer does look creepy

While I liked the idea of him hiding in plain sight and the sense of isolation created in spite of the victims being surrounded by hundreds of other people, they manage to spoil that by having him chase someone into the crowd. Follow my logic here. The movie goes out of its way to establish our killer as being very careful to pick his spots for the killings waiting until they are isolated and easy to murder. He also wears a mask, so no one knows who he is. Yet for no reason they have him chase a girl into a crowd and not only kill her but another person that comes to help. Why? Based on what you have established he should just fade back into the crowd and wait for another chance. I get that sounds picky, but the movie created its own logic and I want them to stick to it. I consider this poor writing when they ignore their own character’s motivations.

But the most absolutely disappointing part of the movie has to be the kills. We get one memorable on screen kill and the rest suck. Four people get stabbed in the gut, one gets a mallet to the noggin’ (offscreen), and another has a needled shoved into his eye. The last one is the only decent kill and is shown on screen. Not only is six deaths a bit light for a movie like Hell Fest, but for the most part you see nothing. There is more gore on television cop shows then you get in this one. I found that very disappointing.

Clearly this isn’t a recommendation from me. Hell Fest fails on every level and doesn’t manage any real scares or gore that is worth a rental fee. And I guess the audience is supposed to be freaked out that the killer turns out to be a normal guy with a family… Have you watched any serial killer documentaries? That is almost always the case, so your big twist is also garbage. The only hellish thing about this movie is that I spent my time watching it.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer

The Forest (1982)

I debated if I should include this one in my Slasher movie marathon. It doesn’t check off all the boxes that I expect from the genre, but it was sold as and lumped in with the early entries to the genre that flooded the market after the original Friday the 13^th. I guess that I might as well put it here since it doesn’t seem to really fit into any one horror subgenre.

I’m a huge fan of legendary actor and stuntman Gary Kent so I really wanted to like this movie. In it Kent plays John, a strange man who lives in the woods. He seems like a decent enough guy, you know except for the cannibalism! Thru a flashback we find out that he was a henpecked husband that finally broke when caught his wife with another man. After taunting him he killed her and her lover and then fled into the woods with his children, a boy and girl. At some later time, the kids either killed themselves or got sick and gave up. Not quite sure which. Never fear because their ghosts still haunt the woods as well as that of their long dead mother who is looking for them.

Confused yet? In all of this mess comes two couples on a camping trip. The women head out a day early to prove that they don’t need the men, who don’t even wait a whole day to follow them. Though the men do get delayed a bit with a bad radiator. This gives the ladies a chance to setup camp, meet the ghosts, and get attacked by John. Nothing personal he is just hungry. When the men finally do show up, they find the ladies gone, meet up with John, and one of them shares a meal with him. Yeah, the dude eats his wife… Don’t get too excited because that is the only thing that this movie is remembered for.

Cannibals and ghosts aren’t exactly what you would expect from a slasher. But the movie does have the requisite attempts at gore and there is quite a bit of stalking as the killer follows his victims around the woods. Sadly, neither of these are executed well at all. First up the gore is mediocre at best. The kills are a combination of throat slashing and stabbing. While that might be realistic it doesn’t make for any interesting gags. Everything is done old school with blood packs full of fake movie blood and hands covering the wounds, so you never get any cool special effects on screen. By the time the Forest came out the bar had been set way higher than that.

Ghost kids... this movie gets weird!

The scenes of killer stalking his victims suffers from some terrible editing. Not only does the movie shift between day and night shots in what is supposed to all be at night, but John seems to have the ability to teleport all over the place. He always manages to be in front of the people he is chasing, in spite of the fact that it would be nearly impossible for this to happen once, much less the half dozen times we see it on screen. Beyond the editing it is also clear that they didn’t have enough story for the movie because we get a ton of filler. Whether it is them talking about camping, getting the radiator fixed, or walking to the campsite (twice… once with the girls and then with the guys!) this movie is padded. That makes for a slow story that will have you watching the clock.

The only time The Forest is at all interesting is when Kent is on the screen. His portrayal of the killer is interesting and not at all over the top. He comes off as a sort of normal guy that was broken by the betrayal of his wife and loss of his kids. Sadly, that isn’t nearly enough to recommend this one. If you want to see a decent flick starring Kent check out School Girls in Chains. Now that is a great movie!

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer