Halloween: noche de brujas

Christopher Vale witnesses his mother brutally raped and killed before being hideously burned and being sent to a mental asylum. Years later some local dweebs get together and throw a party in a nearby cabin. But good old Chris has escaped from the nut-hut to terrorize them. This 'Asylum' outfit has produced 50 some movies, you'd think one of this would be actually watchable, right??? Well you'd be wrong as this film's as awful as all the other films under their banner. It doesn't help that Micheal Gingold's story is hopelessly contrived, dreadfully acted, and deathly dull. I don't mean to single out Gingold exclusively (I'm still sore from suffering through "Leeches"). Oh no, the blame can be spread liberally from the director who has yet to make a decent film on down to the atrocious acting and further down to the sloppy editing and mediocre special effects. Awful with a resounding capital A.

My Grade: D-

Eye Candy: Jan Anderson, Alicia Klein, Stephanie Medina, Erica Roby,and Amanda Ward all got topless. (but you can see Stephanie's twin talents in the MUCH, MUCH better low-budget film "the Janitor")

Halloween Night is about the psychotic adventures of a child who grows up in a mental institution after witnessing his mother's death and also getting severely burned and disfigured. He runs around in a costume on Halloween slashing the heck out of everyone he sees, mostly young scream queens. Some lesbian scenes and a modicum of nudity add to the offensive nature of this film. A few really well scripted scenes make it watchable. Some good musical scores and some bad cinematography. But overall it is a take off on many previous slasher films. If you're looking for some naked girls and a lot of screaming and slashing, this is for you.

For The Asylum Halloween Night is not too bad, they have certainly done much worse. Even with that taken into account, Halloween Night is still not a good movie. There are some things that are done reasonably, some of the daylight scenes are shot nicely, the music is a good mix of jaunty and eerie, Scot Nery does bravely as the one character that we come close to rooting for and there are some gory and imaginative slasher death scenes(honourable mention must go to the hanger death which is just hilarious). There have been worse-looking movies from The Asylum, but the special effects are poorly rendered, the editing is sloppy for much of the movie and some scenes especially the first 10-15 minutes are really amateurishly shot. Chris Vale's make-up is appropriately hideous considering what happens to him, but he looks too much of a zombie and some have already said. The acting is pretty dire from almost everybody, Nery is the best of the lot but then we have Rebekah Kochan overacts her rather shallow character and Derek Osedach mumbles his way through his lines and not much else. The characters are exceedingly annoying and shallow with non-existent character development, the one exception is Chris Vale but he is not much different from similar characters from similar movies. The dialogue is dumb and just painful to listen to, making something like the worst Disney Channel movie seem like Casablanca comparatively. The story is even more of a problem, that it's mind-numbingly ridiculous, painfully predictable and deathly dull is one thing but we also have a complete lack of tension, thrills sense of horror/terror(mainly because of the characters' interactions and expressions being so blank) and suspense, situations and interactions are really contrived and implausible, and there is a heavy reliance on drawn-out done-to-death clichés that are marred even further by being played far too straight. The ending is inept in every way, and if you're finding it difficult to buy or swallow don't blame yourself, you won't be the only one. In conclusion, could have been worse but rather mediocre, not the terrifying story that the cover advertised. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Clearly an attempt to cash in on the success of other Halloween-themed slashers, "Halloween Night" offers nothing new to the genre. However, new offerings does not equate to entertainment, and this movie certainly entertains. For a low-budget DTV, it certainly isn't terrible...I have seen much worse.

The BAD: A weak script, and sub-par acting are this films main faults. Many have posted opinions of the guy who plays David's acting--honestly, I didn't have a big problem with him. That is probably because NOBODY was good in this movie, even Rebekah Kochon who gave a good performance in "When A Killer Calls." None of the actors seem to be really into the film, which is problematic. The script is laughable in parts on the dialogue really consists of nothing but high school hallway banter. The films looks like it was filmed all in one day, and yes, the killer resembles a zombie much more than he does a burn victim! Have the filmmakers ever even seen a burn victim???? I'm pretty sure they don't like they just climbed out of a coffin after decaying for 15 years. I also felt extremely let down by the ending....it was pretty predictable and by-the-book, but also very rushed. There wasn't a big chase scene and really no suspense as to who was gonna live/die.

The GOOD: Some pretty decent death scenes are about all this has going for it, and they aren't even THAT great. Also, the killer here is pretty ruthless and viscous, which some genre fans might find refreshing. But mainly, this entertains because of the old "it's so bad it's good" cliché, and sometimes, like on Halloween eve, that's all I really need out of horror flick--entertainment, no matter what its source. Still die-hard and picky slasher fans should probably just stick to watching the original "Halloween" for the 30th time.

My Grade: D-

Well, I gotta say that this was the best Asylum movie I've seen so far. All the others were spin offs of blockbuster movies ("The Da Vinci Treasure," "Snakes on A Train," "Pirates of Treasure Island"...) which honestly sucked. Even though this storyline is old, the plot was understandable and smooth for a change. The killing scenes were pretty decent, although the blood seemed fake in a couple of cases. The only thing that bothered me was David's fidgety speech. I couldn't understand what he was saying half the time. I think Asylum should stick to making horror films (I believe it's what they first started off doing), which seems to be what they're better at.