All My Friends Are Dead

#AMFAD All My Friends Are Dead had a seemingly fun premise, combining a modern slasher concept with a talented director. The story follows a group of teenagers who rent an Airbnb to attend a big music festival, only to be threatened by a masked killer. The film hints multiple times that the group's past plays a role in why they are being targeted, with the murders loosely based on the seven deadly sins. I usually enjoy these kinds of movies, even though such "dumb slashers" are often flawed and not very good. However, they are usually entertaining and a fun way to pass the time. With Marcus Dunstan as the director, known for movies like The Collector series and the underrated horror thriller The Neighbor, I was intrigued to watch this film. Unfortunately, the result was more disappointing than I expected.

The characters are absolutely unlikable, which is not uncommon for this subgenre. However, the audience needs to connect with the cast on some level to create tension. Without that connection, you do not care when a character dies and cannot root for them. Sometimes, in such cases, you can root for the killer instead, but even that was difficult here. The masked killer lacked depth, and while the motive was clear, the villain was not interesting or memorable enough to root for. The mask itself, a modern slasher design with LED lights, did not stand out or leave a lasting impression.

The acting was subpar, though I would not have minded that too much, especially for a low-budget slasher. The movie is marketed heavily around JoJo Siwa, with her name prominently displayed on the cover. However, she has a very minor role, so if you are watching solely for her, you will likely feel let down.

Despite its terrible characters, uneven script, and predictability, the movie was entertaining. I do not regret watching it, and I can understand why others might hate it. That said, you can still have a decent amount of fun with it despite all its flaws. Overall, it is a slightly below-average slasher for genre fans and might be suitable for watching with a group of friends, especially if you are barely paying attention and laughing at the characters' absurd decisions. While I hoped this movie would offer much more, it fell short of my expectations. Still, in my eyes, it is a watchable flick. [5.4/10]

On the verge of a major music festival, a group of friends get together to travel there only to get stranded along the way and are forced to stay at a house until it's repaired, but as they spend the time fixing their social media games are unaware a masked killer is hunting them one by one.

Overall, this was a decent if somewhat troubling modern slasher effort. Among the better features here is the film's strong attempts at managing a fun connection between the group and the Seven Deadly Sins. The concept itself is handled well enough with the initial massacre taking place decades earlier and featuring the earlier girl as a previous target that turns the new group into equally-obvious victims involving her as a source of the rampage based on how they drove her to kill herself featuring enough interplay with the group to make everything known as they wait around. That this leads into a solid series of brutal and graphic death scenes featuring the torture-porn aesthetic of the trapped victim forced into a specific situation that ties their chosen sin into a streaming experience that includes a gruesome death at the end. With the setup taking place in the lighted dungeon using tricks to complete the connection with Deadly Sins and making everything come together quite clearly, there's a lot to like here in some regards. There are some really hard problems to overcome with this one. The main stumbling block is the most obvious and egregious one in the utterly annoying and aggravating characters that we're forced to follow throughout the running time. This one again decides to follow the trend of modern slasher or genre films going with characters utterly obsessed with being social media famous which means everything they do is dependent on how many likes or follows it will get them, spend the entirety of the running time glued to their phones, or complaining about anything not going their way even if there's nothing that can be done about it. Given that we're introduced to them on their phones getting away from a prank gone wrong, concerned with making sure their clothing is perfect, or furiously texting the others trying to make sure they get likes on their posts, it never gets better after dropping them onto us as massively irritating teens that keeps going throughout the film. It never gets better and keeps this one from truly getting any kind of genuine sympathy for the group. The other factor here is the generally lackluster and somewhat underwhelming pace that takes forever to get going. The group spends a large section of time continuing their inane social media uplinks or other personal indiscretions mentioned above that it feels far longer than it should with the slashing starting at around the hour mark. This could've been far more expedient to get to the killing with everything going on but the focus on displaying the group of moronic and irritating social media-obsessed figures that are far stupider than they appear leaving it open for one of the more infuriating and just terrible endings in the genre where it continues on far past it's usefulness to feel like overkill. Planting everything up the way it does with the kind of piling on plot points that aren't necessary simply to pull off a lame twist and setup for a sequel that won't be that interesting causes this to be even more problematic, and in general, leaves this one with a lot of flaws.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

The movie was well acted by a pretty decent ensemble cast, but the writing made every character extremely unlikable and took away any regret the viewer might have at their demises.

The viewer ends up asking themselves a question from scene one...are college aged people really that shallow, mean, self-centered and dumb as these characters??? They are clueless in every step of the movie and of course break every rule of the "Surviving a horror movie" rulebook. Situations which normal intelligent people would be wary of; they jump into without any bit of caution!

The LGBT underlying theme is somewhat of a surprise, but it also paints a pretty negative picture of same-sex people, in fact this film paints a bad picture of LOTS of people, young people are flakey and unintelligent, guys are all horndogs, girls are addicted to social media exploitation and are constantly looking for a sexual hook-up even if they dislike the partner!. It also leaves a VERY strong negative impression of the police!

Wow! Talk about insulting every group of people equally!!!!

Horror films, as a genre, have always cannibalized one another. It's a fairly rare thing to see an actual new idea in horror. When a new idea does come about, the film makes a mark.. and is then copied repeatedly. This film is NOT one of those unique horror films.

If you've ever wanted to explain how horror films cannibalize each other, this film is a PERFECT example of creating a horror film without one single unique idea and just using a collection of stolen plots and motivations from OTHER films strung together.

This film starts with 10 minutes of just random back story to try and set up some history - using a concept taken from the movie "Seven".

Then it goes on to a typical young adult road trip ultimately ending up in a "Cabin in the Woods".

It's a very odd choice to put the title sequence here..... 20 minutes into the film.....

Then the story continues a la "I Know What you Did Last Summer" in addition to borrowing heavily from the "Saw" and "Scream" franchise.

.... a callback to "Seven" (Or perhaps "The Collector")... and then "Scream" again.... and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" Again...

Acting was a mix of terrible to passable. But as a story it was just a bad copy of every popular horror concept from the past.

------- Pass -------------

The trailer for this movie looked interesting so i gave it a shot. The intro is a bit confusing and goes on for a while but once we finally introduced to the main characters, the movie pick a better pace.

Most of the characters were extremely annoying and most viewers will probably be eager to see them meet their demise, but i think it was mostly done on purpose.

The "hostel-light" scenes were interesting and i kinda wish there would had been more of them. Eventually the movie turn more into your regular slasher but it make sense storywise. The kills are overall gory/bloody enough but some of the practical effects were a bit amateurish and looked kinda fake.

The Scream part about the mystery killer is fine but i figured most of it way before the ending. Keeping this spoiler free, was the payoff worth it? Kinda... but part of the ending felt a bit wonky.

Overall its a decent enough slasher flick. Won't break any ground but enjoyable for fans of the genre wich are always on the lookout for a new one.