Blood Fest

Your truly is an old-school horror fanatic, and the concept of meta-horror ranks extremely high on my personal list of most irritating cinematic trends ever. Sometimes, very exceptionally, it's used in a creative fashion ("Man Bites Dog", "The Cabin in the Woods", "Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon") but far more frequently it just comes across as pretentious and pseudo-intelligent. "Blood Fest" is the most embarrassing meta-horror film I've seen thus far, though. A slasher about surviving a pre-organized massacre by following the clichéd rules of classic slashers. Seriously? How many times has that been done before? Wes Craven centered his whole "Scream" franchise around this exact same gimmick, and even those films are massively overrated. But hey, writer/director Owen Egerton clearly thought his own script was brilliant, because he even depicts the "arrogant horror mastermind" himself. "Blood Fest" does contain some good gore and a handful of atmospheric moments (notably the clown gathering and the creepy dolls in the movie theater), so maybe there's hope that Egerton has it in him to make a half-decent "real" horror movie one day. You may now proceed to vote this comment as "non-useful" because I'm old, whiny and without sense of humor.

Blood Fest is a horror-comedy which can be filed under the meta movie bracket. It unashamedly wears its influences on its sleeves and it is an unpretentious celebration of the horror genre. The man behind it is writer/director/actor Owen Egerton who plays the circus ringleader here. The story is very simple. A horror-obsessed teenager goes along to a new horror-themed festival called Blood Fest with his two pals. When there, it becomes quickly apparent that the horror is real and the attendees become the prey of the killers who run the place.

The set-up of the movie is basically a neat way to allow for the inclusion of a variety of horror tropes and situations. To this end we have chainsaw killers, killer clowns, a hillbilly psycho, sexy vampires, marauding zombies and torture sadism; with nods to all manner of movies including The Wizard of Gore (1970), The Evil Dead (1981), Ring (1998), Saw (2004), etc. It is quite a lot of silly fun and pretty amusing quite a bit of the time too with some funny lines, i.e. 'your mother was killed by horror'. What it ultimately is, though, is a gore-fest with knowing nods to the genre and as such will make for somewhat entertaining viewing for horror fans.

I was so looking forward to this movie after seeing such entertaining films as "HellHouse LLC" and "Escape Room", but this movie was just a huge waste of potential. Riddled with low budget and low effort special effects, this really came off as a student project of some sort, and nothing looked realistic enougfh to be considered "scary". Everything looked obviously fake, so much so that, you could easily see where the actors were replaced with mannequins and it just ruined the entire film for me. The script was asinine, the adult actors were hammy and horribly untalented, and the movie is only fun when the kids are around. It's just so unfortunate.

But man, those kids were so talented, so dynamic, so convincing. I was so impressed by the 3 child leads and their ability to carry the film on their own. They took a garbage script and worked with it, and pulled out all of the stop to convince the audience that they cared. The young girl, specifically, has such a bright future ahead of her with those acting chops. It's like she was born to be on camera. My favorite character, the young Filipino boy, really made me smile every time he showed up. Such a lovable and entertaining character.

This movie was a huge wasted potential; what could have been an entertaining film full of carnage turned out to be a sophomiric romp were the kids outshined the adult actors every step of the way. It almost makes you wonder how much more entertaining teh film might have been if they had hired adult actors that could actually act? Boggles the mind.

Don't see this movie if you lack patience for crappy acting. It's not teh worst hour and half you could spend watching a movie, but when that in itself is a compliment, you know that the movie really isn't meant for anyone.

A fun movie to watch. The story was easy to digest and most of the acting was believable. I was skeptical to see this after the trash Lazer Team was but they proved me wrong. It's light faire but truly fun to see.

Predictable and filled with cliches, but still somewhat entertaining overall. This has some nice effects (it is violent as the title does suggest, though there are other movies out there with a bigger amount/volume of blood flowing) and the characters while almost cardboard cutouts are being played with some gusto that makes you almost that fact.

This is not a great movie or a classic or whatever but it is here to entertain you and also tries on some morals (especially towards the end). Having said all that, it is just beyond making sense, so don't try to even think about character motivation and whatnot. Watch it without any single thought and you may be entertained, otherwise it might come close to a waste of time