SLASHER PARTY (2019)

SLASHER PARTY (2019)

Tagline: Nope

(Horror, Mystery, Dumb People Doing Dumb Things) [R]

Note: This movie never got an MPAA rating, but it would have been a [R] due to brief nudity and language. This movie is also known as AFTER PARTY. 

In this one, a group of social media influencers is invited to an afterparty in Hollywood. After starting a night of debauchery and selfish indulgence, the partygoers are taken out 1 by 1 by a killer where a smiley face mask. 

First off, if you know me, you know I can’t stand 99.99% of horror flicks that came out after 1995 or so unless they are in the SCREAM or I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER series (or) they started out in the ’80s like CHILD’S PLAY, etc. Anyway, this thing showed up in my streaming queue as something I might be interested in, probably because I have been doing a bunch of “slasher” reviews for Halloween this year. If you throw a smiley-face villain at me, I might go for your dumb horror flick and that is what happened here. Also – finding out that Danny Trejo (ANCHORMAN) was in this, I was thinking – “Danny only lets me down every other 2 or 3 B-movies, what the heck?”. 

It doesn’t take more than 5 minutes into this movie when I realize the writers can’t write for crap. Or at the very least if they can, they didn’t bother doing that on this thing. It’s bad, it’s hauntingly bad. There are episodes of Barney & Friends that are more tolerable than the diatribe of absolutely blistering nonsense coming out of everyone involved in this movie. You read that right, nearly everyone sucks. 

One saving grace of this movie is that the thing is only 80 minutes long. Most people have 80 minutes to watch thing a movie just in between laundry cycles or waiting for the commercials to be over while simultaneously watching network television. I also actually did like the killer’s mask. For some reason having a cartoony-looking character picking off the latest crop of unsuspecting teens or your adults is a little more interesting than just watching a regular due with an angry face running around after people. It also adds a bit of mystery to the proceedings. 

Not only is the script void of anything resembling decent writing or plot, but it also unfortunately reveals the killer way too early in the movie. It feels like riding out the suspense for the last 5 to 7 minutes would have helped this one out a bit. Not much, but a bit. I guess a few of the cast members are actual influencers on (insert garbage social media site here). Simona Dimov ends up being kind of the lead here as Skye, but she hasn’t done any other work I am familiar with and I have zero desire to watch INTERVIEWING MONSTERS AND BIGFOOT which looks just as dumb as this. Isabella Brenza plays April who might be the only character slightly worth rooting for seems like she might have her career going a bit with 3 projects coming up next year so far. Vitaly Zdorovetskiy who plays Shark seems to be on some sort of a break since 2019. We also get a Tom Lister Jr. (THE FIFTH ELEMENT) sighting in this. He sadly passed away in 2020, but still has several movies coming out. Denny Love also appears as Dre and at least seems to be trying a little. I will say that Denny has some new projects coming out as well, so props to him. The only other actor bothering to even try a little is Aaron Schwartz who plays Angelo. Everyone else just mails it in and barely even comes across as themselves, much less as actual actors. By the way, Aaron was Dave Karp on THE MIGHTY DUCKS. This is not meant to say any one of the people in this movie couldn’t knock it out of the park someday, but in this damn movie, they all pretty much suck. 

For horror fans, there isn’t much being offered by this movie and we even have the strange situation where the killer shoots a few people. Shoots a few people? Come on? 

I guess you can already predict what this movie is getting from me and it’s a big giant 1 out of 7. This is one of the few movies where citizen critics tried to warn me and I failed to listen. Hopefully, you won’t. This movie is a waste of your time and definitely isn’t worth a Halloween-Horror-Movie-O-Thon. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF LOOKHU AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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