Stag Night

This has to be the strangest horror film I've ever seen...I'll list the basics:

Decent production values: Check Decent enough cast and not bad acting: Check Dark and atmospheric: Check Creepy and plenty of jumps: Check Great gore effects and plenty of blood: Check Decent soundtrack: Check

All of the elements to make a good horror film for even the most demanding horror fans...So why on earth did the director feel the need to have his camera man shake the camera from side to side ALL THE WAY through the film???

It was nauseating, annoying, difficult to make out what was going on for most of the time. The action and horror scenes were extremely difficult to concentrate on...Underneath this was a very good horror film but it was totally ruined by the worst camera work I have ever seen in a film.

I'll give it a 3 purely for what lies underneath but it loses 5 stars for the camera work...Hugely disappointing...Watch Creep instead, it's no classic but it holds the same premise and more importantly, you can see what's going on.

This movie is quite all right for its kind (Creep, The Midnight Meat Train etc). It's gorgeously shot and you can actually "feel" the action and all those fast-moving running scenes and bloody fights add to the action. The film is barely scary if you have already seen movies of this kind. The only thing that distinguishes this film from others is that here you're not dealing with one or two savage creatures but many.

The characters, their dialog lines and their reactions are quite natural and the music score fits the scenes perfectly well. If you decide to go watch this film, be prepared to see a lot of repetitive actions; running in endless dark tunnels while being followed by a horde of savage creatures. The savage men are believable at least they don't look like monsters.

The characters are not well developed but you can get a glimpse into their real selves through some of their actions like sacrificing themselves for the sake of others. At certain places in the film (especially towards the end) the film desperately tries to get you sympathize with the dying characters and feel their pain through the background music, because in these kinds of movies we rarely care if any of the characters dies due to the fact that character development is absent from a lot of horror movies and this one is no exception.

The only "effective" scenes in the movie are those where the victims look into the eyes of their killers for a few seconds before they die a slow death. The movie as a whole is not scary, but the last scene startled me. They should've used more of this "startling" technique throughout the film instead of showing the creatures approaching their victims from miles away which made the film very predictable, although the ending was not a cliché and that's what I liked most about this film.

Think "Wrong Turn" set in subterranean Manhattan.

"Stag Night" follows a group of friends on a subway home from a bachelor party in NYC. After exiting their train too early at an abandoned station, the group along with two female strippers from the party look for a means of exit. Unfortunately for them, they've walked off the train and straight into the stomping grounds of a clan of subterranean cannibals. It's gonna be a long night.

"Stag Night" works with the cannibal killer formula that's been done for the past three decades, but, like the 1972 film "Raw Meat" (also known as "Death Line" in the UK), this one is set in abandoned subway tunnels. We saw a similar scenario in the 2004 flick "Creep" with Franka Potente, where she struggles to survive against a mad cannibal in London's subways. There's something eerie about being underground in the first place because it adds an increased sense of helplessness; you've literally got the weight of the earth against you, and means of escape are few and far between. Even creepier is the fact that these abandoned subway tunnels and platforms do actually exist far beneath the streets of New York and London, and the notion that people could be inhabiting these dark, old places is one that is extremely eerie.

This film makes ample use of its setting, which is ultimately the hook, line and sinker for this one. Transplant this story to the woods, and you've got "Wrong Turn". Transplant it to a nuclear California desert, and you've got "The Hills Have Eyes". It's familiar, yes, but who said familiar cannot be fun? This is an extremely violent film, so modern gorehounds will get their money's worth here. For those who prefer slowburn suspense, this one may be a pass. I like both ends of the spectrum, and this one delivers on action. I've read some complaints about the cinematography in the film and the shaky camera-work, which are understandable complaints, but I will say that it does give the film a visceral texture. I could, however, have down without the corny slow-motion shots during scenes of high drama though.

The production quality is actually really great, and the subterranean atmosphere is well-used. The villains in the film are also surprisingly scary looking, and, where films like the aforementioned "Raw Meat" gave a humanity to the villains, this film rather presents them as outright murderous animals. Acting-wise, there's a solid cast here that make up the core characters. Kip Pardue and Breckin Meyer are both pleasures to watch, and Vinessa Shaw (you may recognize her from "The Hills Have Eyes" remake or Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut"— or, if you're a '90s kid, Disney's "Hocus Pocus") plays a sassy Columbia student by day and stripper by night. There is some particularly funny dialogue between her and Meyer, that is, until things get serious.

I felt the ending of the film was abrupt and the last-second surprise was a "c'mon" moment for me, but I can forgive it since I was glued to the screen for the 80 minutes prior. Standout scene: the group's first sighting of the killers as they dismember a security guard, and the train track beheading.

Overall, "Stag Night" is all in good fun. It's not high art, but I tuned into it right at the beginning around 1am, and I was taken by it enough that I finished it to the end. Genre fans will likely enjoy it, while most others will not. As far as indie horror goes, this one is fairly high up there. 6/10.

Stag night kind of reminds me of the 1973 movie deathline in America it's called raw meat. But censored heavily. And midnight meat train. It's an ugly world below the subway and these guys and 2 women leave a subway car and get trapped in this dirty disgusting world inhabited by cannibals. Can we call them chuds?Anyway it's a predictable story with a lot of blood and guts. It stars; Breckin Myer (Freddy's dead, final nightmare) Vanessa Shaw, and a few unknowns. It's a good time Easter you should only see once. No visible plot. But an uneasy feeling of claustrophobia.with rats and roaches and dirty toilets. The subway can be a very scary place and you really don't know what kind of evil lives underneath. But no alligators so they did leave that urban legend out of the movie. But can you get any worse than canabals?

There are some lines at the beginning of the movie (after the "initial" shock scene that is), that try to convince that this movie has a real background. Of course as with many other horror movies, this does not stay in our reality and has quite some major flaws in it's story telling. You just get enough background information on some of the guys (their relationship to each other), to know who is who. Beyond that there is nothing to really distinguish them (apart from the character that Breckin Meyers portrays, but never really achieves anything with, except from his first scenes).

Actually, if you didn't know Breckin Meyer (which could be the case), you might be excused to not even really notice him and be completely irritated by his action(s) later as the movie progresses.

Storytelling and character aren't really the backbones of this movie, but it has some nice/decent horror moments and some pretty good gore effects. Unfortunately some scenes are edited/shot as if the cameraman/editor had been under "influence". I'm not a big fan of the "shake the camera" and it will look frightening theory. Others might be, not me though.

Decent, but nothing you really need to watch, unless you are into this sort of genre pictures (and even then there are so many other movies out there)