Pool Party Massacre

Really did enjoy this film, it was fun , imaginative and the acting was not bad. If you enjoy B-Movies you will really dig this feature.

After the online Facebook hype and the rave reviews, much like the film "Don't F**k in the Woods," I was looking forward to seeing this. It is an 80's tribute film, same things MANY low budget people are doing today. So much so that it has ALMOST worn out it's welcome and I LOVE 80's movies. This one has some nice production value and a nice look, even if some of the basics of film production seem to be ignored. And when a film uses a tagline promoting itself in the same breath as "Slumber Party Massacre" you had better deliver. It ALMOST gets it and then takes a nosedive off the deep end of the pool.

Why do almost all low budget films today have to have a group of people who are so nasty. First of all, they are all the same characters. Over and over. And the writers always make me hate them. Terrible people. I have no emotional investment at all in any of them. This is what the originals did right. Watch Halloween, Slumber Party Massacre and Prom Night. Why did I like them? I found people to care about. Even Terror Train and Motel Hell gave us defined characters. It is one thing to want to make a tribute to those films, but these low budget teams today are missing the vital points. They copy the music, they try and outdo the gore, they steal the formula. But they don't get it at all. Maybe when they are better at their craft.

I watched a PG film, Happy Death Day along with this. And I loved it. I normally hate PG movies, especially horror movies. If it would have been gorier, it would have been perfect. The same with Final Girls from a few years ago. Too tame in the gore for me, but great movies. Really good writing. This movie could have been as good, and should have been, but the writing let it down. And the gore. This film should have really went all out with the gore. I wanted to love this, but it was not bloody enough and I had no one to care about.

Still, I do see promise in the film. I would like to see what this team can do as they get better and have a few movies under their belts.

There's nothing groundbreaking here-- girl throws a pool party, uninvited guys show up, and people start dying. The kills are fun and the movie is cheesy in that special camp sort of way you want it to be.

My biggest problem with the movie is after people start dying, you expect someone to eventually notice and the remaining people have to react. That doesn't really happen until the last 10 minutes with the final girl in this movie. One-by-one each character finds a reason to go off alone and the killer picks them off. It's fun at first, but by about the half way point it's just killing characters you already don't care about.

When it gets to the last few remaining characters, you really just want it to be over. The kills are cheap and fun but it begins to wear thin by the end and the characters aren't nearly enough to carry the movie all the way through.

In swanky suburban Las Vegas, a group of girls have a pool party and a couple of dudes show up. Unfortunately a mysterious slayer, who uses various yard tools to do his gruesome work, puts the kibosh on the proceedings.

"Pool Party Massacre" (2017) is a micro-budget Indie that only cost around $7000 and it's amazing that a fairly entertaining slasher can be made for that low amount. To keep the costs down, the writer/director shot it at his impressive abode in the suburbs of Las Vegas.

The acting of the no-name actors isn't bad considering what they got paid, as long as you don't mind campiness and the fact that their characters are all unlikable, except one. Their lines are delivered in a rat-a-tat-tat manner, as if they were reading from a teleprompter, yet I was impressed with the work that was put into the wordy script even though the characters are disagreeable which, let's face it, was intentional.

Speaking of which, the writer/director satirizes the slasher formula and includes all the main staples. In the female department curvy Alexis Adams as blonde Tiffany is the most attractive, but Margaux Némé as Latino Nancy wins the day in all-around beauty. The movie scores pretty well on this front.

While the one-dimensional setting, low-budget vibe and distasteful characters/antics limit the flick and lower my grade, it moves right along and has quality kills/gore if that's your thang. I was also pleased with the proverbial final girl.

The movie runs 1 hour, 21 minutes, and was shot in Las Vegas.

GRADE: C- (but compared to other spare change slashers that cost around the same amount, it rates much higher)

Pool Party Massacre (2017)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Throwback to the 80's slasher film takes place at a rich girl's parents house. The rich girl is throwing a party for her rich friends and pretty soon they're being knocked off my an unknown person who is using various tools from the garage.

POOL PARTY MASSACRE is a throwback to an era where it was cool to have "Massacre" in your title. The entire film from writer-director Drew Marvick is a throwback to the days when dumb characters did dumb things and often paid for it with their lives. As was the case with many of those films, this one here plays up the mystery angle as we're given a few suspects but we have to wait until the end for the result.

Unlike a lot of the slashers from the 80's, this one here goes a bit over-the-top when it comes to the humor. The film has some funny and campy moments and there's no doubt that the film is giving a wink to the viewers who are fans of the films it's inspired by. With that said, I think the film tried to be a bit too clever and a bit too "ha ha" for its own good. The girls at the party are played up as very annoying valley girls and they are a bit too annoying.

With that said, the film has a lot to offer and where it really succeeds are with the death scenes. As I stated, there are a variety of tools used for the murders and thankfully not everything is CGI. There are some practical effects and it was nice seeing actual fake blood. There's nothing more annoying than seeing a bunch of CGI blood and thankfully we've got the real stuff here. The death scenes are creative and fun even though they're certainly not in the same league as a Tom Savini.

POOL PARTY MASSACRE is a film that works for what it is. It's not a masterpiece or even an overly good film but as far as a spoof goes, it's pretty darn entertaining.