Afterparty

I did see this Spanish (wannabe) slasher out, but I was totally worn out afterwards: it's (fortunately not too long) 75 minutes of totally chaotic running around of 5 persons, locked-up inside some isolated villa (from the outside it's like a post-modern bunker made of concrete), everybody is either chasing, or trying to escape from everybody else, hitting and stabbing at each other with whatever they can find, and screaming their heads off. The action is cramped into all kinds of corridors, stairwells, and rooms, preferably with the lights turned off, so it's even hard to tell the various persons from each other. Which in fact isn't really a problem, because they are all nondescript and extremely unsympathetic; only main character Carlos, who's supposed to be some sort of soap superstar that teen girls rave about, gets a tiny bit of background, just to proof that he's undoubtedly the worst of the lot.

Yes, there is a meagre story: the girls who all swooned over Carlos find out that he's in fact untrue and philandering, and want to teach him a lesson by construing a weird prank, that goes totally awry, with the afore mentioned consequence of everybody going at everybody's throat. Probably there's meant to be a moral: something with the dangers of stardom and blind worshipping by fans, but it goes all down the same chaotic and pretentious drain. And for a supposed horror there's hardly any suspense or serious scares, while the killings are simple and uninspired. I would say: don't bother with this totally superfluous failure.

A semi-slasher from Spain wanting to be a meta-satire on TV Pop culture and fandom, but comes off boringly pretentious, light-weight and unimaginative. Carlos, a pin-up teen idol and self-centered TV star of a horror TV show, is invited to a party, which turns out to be a wild, drunken night. The morning after, he wakes up to find that he's trapped in the mansion along with three girls who he had encounters with during night. However something much more sinister is at work, as the four soon realize there's no communication to the outside world, and that they're not alone, as there's a masked intruder (wearing the same outfit from his TV show) wanting to see Carlos squirm by toying with them.

The big cross going against "AFTERPARTY" is that it's hard to feel anything for these characters and the situations they find themselves in. They are a selfish, shallow bunch of caricatures that have no redeeming qualities. Then the uninteresting mystery and flat slasher traits predictably unfolds into an ill-conceived twist in an attempt to be clever, trying to make the viewer change their perspective. I just groaned. However it's the risqué finale encounter that should've had more of a kick, but the trite tonal shifts in wanting to be hip, makes light of something that needed to be darker and focus on the irrational psychosis with more thought than just throwing out the clichéd psychotic mind snap. It is a film of two halves, but there's no question there's a lot of running in and out of rooms, down and up hallways, constant locked doors, poorly lit crevices and numerous stab happy moments. Everything plays out accordingly; no surprises, no thrills, no atmosphere and no sense.

Decent slasher-thriller from Spain. Reasonably interesting and entertaining: good setup, decent amount of intrigue and tension. Doesn't degenerate into the usual gory death-a-minute cliché of the average slasher.

Also has some comments to make on the pluses and minuses of stardom, and the irrationality of fans. Good conclusion.

However, the twist is fairly predictable. Even before things started getting suspenseful in the back of my mind I kept thinking, based on the synopsis "What if..?". After the twist, things get a bit silly, and this lets down all that went before.

Decent performances.

There are quite a few flaws in there and it's pretty hard to actually root for most (if any) of the characters in this. It's also pretty weak on the setting of the whole thing. But then the "reveal" is even weaker. If you ground your rating only on that, then you can subtract 2 points from my rating.

Being a Spanish/European production there is quite a lot of nudity, but there is not that much blood. So if you look for the latter, you might be disappointed. What I did like though, is the fact that the morality is being questioned. Not in the best way possible as I mentioned above but it still tries. And the movie can be fun (especially if watched with others), even if you can see where it's heading ...

You would cry too if … you were exposed to yet another dumb, derivative and pretentious slasher failure. "Afterparty" was presented to me at the annual Horror/Fantasy film festival in my country as a supposedly fresh and innovative variation on "Scream", updated with biting satire towards the nowadays hype around untalented but immensely popular media figures. The synopsis briefly describes how an obnoxious and self-centered sitcom actor with a hunky face is trapped in a remote house, the morning after a wild and drunken party night, and pursued by a masked killer. Sounds potentially interesting, but unfortunately the script is uninspired and nearly not gutsy enough to shock or even surprise. The scenes inside the hermetically sealed off mansion, where the anti-hero is forced to team up with three chicks that he had sex with throughout the night, are incredibly tedious and mundane, while the plot-twists and character development are totally implausible and absurd. None of the protagonists deserve any sympathy; or even compassion when they get slaughtered. Besides, for a late-night slasher picture, "Afterparty" is too talkative and dramatically short of gory make-up effects and nasty situations. There's never any suspense or even a little bit of unsettling atmosphere. I usually look forward to Spanish horror flicks at the Festival, because they're often groundbreaking and exhilarating, but this is as lame and unmemorable as any random made-for-TV thriller.