The Slasher Hunter

The Slasher Hunter began as series of 6 webisodes from director Steve Rudzinski that were released on YouTube in early 2011. The webisodes have also since been combined into a single short film, also available on DVD as well as included in Red Christmas.

The concept behind The Slasher Hunter is that there are a group of killers called Slashers with the people who hunt them appropriately called Slasher Hunters. Thrown into the mix are Survivors, which is a take on the "Final Girl" concept where there is always a person that survives a slasher's attack.

The short starts with 2 Slashers trying to kill a victim until a Slasher Hunter comes and saves the day. He doesn't care anything about the victim, only about taking down the Slashers and then leaving. This Slasher Hunter, portrayed by Chad Phillips, is the main protagonist of the short.

We are also introduced to a group of Slashers that are gathered playing a game. These are all variants of more popular slasher icons. For example, Charles is a play on Chucky, Pleatherface a play on Leatherface, Puzzle a play on Jigsaw, etc. The leader of the group is Steve Rudzinksi as Frank, a play on Freddy (instead of being burned, in this universe he was frozen and has icicle streams coming from his blue face). The Slashers decide to band together to take on a group of Survivors that are at a cabin in the woods.

The Slasher Hunter finds out about this meeting and the rest of the short involves The Slasher Hunter trying to protect the main Survivor, Lee, who is more unique than the usual Survivor.

The Slasher Hunter is an abrupt man, definitely someone who doesn't want to joke around and simply wants to get down to business. He is shown to have a short fuse during his confrontation with the Slasher Axe. We find out he's considered the best of the Slasher Hunters in the area but is still just a lowly grunt taking orders.

Lee is portrayed by Derek Rothermund and comes off as a highly unlikable character, with the others in his group trying to ignore him or push him off on others in the group. This plays off the usual archetype of the geek not being welcomed by the popular kids, which is exactly how it's played off here. It makes you wonder why they keep him around, yet that is eventually answered when we find out why Lee is so unique.

The Slashers themselves are shown to be more hilarious caricatures of their counterparts. There is a rivalry between the variants of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because Michael was the "first" silent killer, yet Jason is the silent killer due to having a squeaky voice. It's little things like that which add a lot of good comedy into things. Frank, the Freddy counterpart, is constantly making jokes and tries to steal the show at times.

The one downside to this is that the video and audio quality is very rough. This was one of Rudzinski's earlier works and it's obvious he didn't have any high tech quality equipment available to work with, but I think he did the best with whatever he had. The editing works well for the most part, it gets sketchy in a few scenes (there is one scene where a character is talking, yet when we cut to a different angle the first character isn't visibly talking even though we hear her talking).

I think they did a great job with locations and the practical effects. There was one scene towards the end I was surprised they did an effect, would not have expected it from a short like this. The locations themselves were a perfect choice for what was filmed. I've seen many independent shorts like this where they just didn't have as many locations available as they could and it hindered how everything came together. Not here, the locations were perfect!

This is definitely a labor of love and you can tell that everyone had a fun time. Do not go in expecting a masterpiece but instead just a fun ride. It gets cheesy at times, but there isn't anything else like this.

As a serious movie, it probably gets a low score. But it's not... it's an over the top parody. The acting is over the top... the script is over the top... and that's what you get... an over the top film that made me chuckle several times in 34 minutes.

I played a very small role and didn't see 95% of the film get made. When I saw it for the first time, I wasn't surprised with what I saw based on my small part in the film.

If you have 34 minutes to watch a creative writer/director entertain you... watch it. It gets more entertaining as the action moves along. Grab some popcorn and get ready for the Slasher Hunter...