Slumber Party Massacre – Smart Twist on the Slasher
Director: Danishka Esterhazy
Writer: Suzanne Keilly (Screenplay)
Starring: Hannah Gonera, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Mila Rayne, Alex McGregor, Reze-Tiana Wessels, Rob van Vuuren
Plot: Based on the 1982 original, this remake follows Dana and a group of her friends as they go on a trip to have a slumber party. But after car trouble causes them to stay at a secluded cabin, their fun turns to terror as their night becomes a fight for survival as they must escape a drill-wielding killer.
Runtime: 1 Hour 26 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Slumber Party Massacre starts as Dana (Gonera) looks to return to the cabin where her mother was attacked in her teenage years, joined by her friends Maeve (Sholto-Douglas), Alix (Rayne), Breanie (McGregor) and Ashley (Wessels), where the five look to have drinks, drugs and a good time together.
As the night unfolds, Alix discovers Russ Thorn (Vuuren) is still alive, leaving bodies around the area, leaving the girls to need to fight to survive.
Thoughts on Slumber Party Massacre
Characters & Performances – Dana is the daughter of the lone survivor of the previous attack, she is looking to have a weekend away with her friends, which will see them head out to the same cabin with their own motivation. She does seem to be the only one that understand what could happen, while the rest do end up trying to be against stereotypes, until things start going wrong. This is one of the biggest questions being left about these characters, where everything is created to break the mould, but ends up falling short where certain decisions will make you roll your eyes. When it comes to the killer, we get the creepy figure that carries his power drill around looking to skew people. The performances don’t get enough to shine, which could have given us an iconic role for the future of the horror franchise.
Story – The story here is a re-imagination of the original, with the added sequel idea, much like what Friday the 13th did years before, squashing the first movie into the opening, before giving us a fresh bunch of characters to follow. This does bring us a new way to tell the story, which is a direction that is new, is excited to see, but only for part of the film, it does end up falling apart in how the final act plays out, falling back into the typical slasher errors, which can work with certain tone, but this film goes so out of the way to change the normal, it just gets caught up going down the same old style. This will end up being a slasher story that is easy to watch, fitting in the franchise with ease.
Themes – Slumber Party Massacre is a horror slasher that looks to build on what the original did with the driller killer, only to spin on what we would be expecting, with a couple of clever kills along the way, which is what we can want to see in the slasher movies. The location does create the isolated location, which again, is all we needed for the film.
Slumber Party Massacre will be available on Digital Download from 13th December
Final Thoughts – Slumber Party Massacre is a slasher with a great twist on concept, which will turn what expect on its head.