Slashers

This is a fine little exploitation film made on a shoestring budget (approximately $150K, according to the maker). There's enough humor and panache to keep it interesting and reviewers who've criticised it's production design and performers are somewhat out of line, when you consider the budget and amazingly short shooting schedule. The sets and performances actually tend to work, when you compare them to the insidious TV shows being lampooned. Frankly, the actors here do just as well as Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Jennifer Love-Hewitt and the rest of their ilk ever do in big-budget counterparts. I personally appreciate the enthusiasm of filmmakers like Maurice Devereaus and his crew for putting out personal little productions like SLASHERS, and look forward to what they might do with a studio-style budget.

Slashers is some kind of social satire horror movie that introduces us to six characters being in a Japanese game show where they have to survive the night against three different killers. Honestly the idea sounds kind of fun and I was curious to see how this movie would turn out.

First of all let me say that the acting is really not good, most of the protagonists act pretty bad and that can be annoying to endure for 99 minutes. Also some of the dialogue was really dumb and probably even annoying but I would not rule out that this was made intentional. Exactly how some of the nudity was made intentional, two of the female characters get their shirt ripped off and the one girl has quite some screen time topless with hands over her breasts. It is even said in the beginning that nudity makes the characters more popular which is probably a nod to reality TV shows like Big Brother. The movie also has some great gore with some decent effects and probably the most memorable and best thing about the movies are the killers. You have three different killers that act at least a little bit better than our protagonists and they have different methods to torture the six contestants and I liked that. Overall the movie is decent and if you can bear the acting you might have some fun with it. [5,4/10]

i have to admit, amongst all the overabundance of reality shows and reality rip-offs i.e. Blair Witch Project; Series 7; The ST. Francisville Experiment..i more than expected, i automatically assumed, that $LA$HER$ would be completely a waste of time after reading it's review in Fango. I mean, with lame character names like PREACHER MAN and CHAINSAW CHARLIE, i was sure this was going to be as horrible, if not worse than, THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING. However, i came across a screener and sat down to watch it less than 3 hours ago and was surprisingly impressed. As a whole, the movie isn't the best thing i've ever seen but it had some unexpected charisma (one being the commercial break situations).With the exception of Chainsaw Charlie, who could possibly be a descendant of Jar Jar Binks, the villians or slashers, if you will, were at times over the top but not too annoying. The story played out quite frantically and the actual contestants weren't bad actors at all. Don't get me wrong, i don't see OSCAR knocking on any of their doors for this one, but they were pretty good for a B-movie cast. What i found to be the best part of $LA$HER$ was the fact that it focused on the characters more than the actual hunting. Most B-movies attempt to do this to keep their films from being gorey fluff, but fail because the dialogue is as bad as the frights. This one captured something special though, perhaps it was because there weren't many stereotypical characters. All the blue prints were there to elaborate on, but instead we see these characters for who they are through their stories told in between being hunted. They could have had the "token" personalities but they didn't. The writing could use some touch ups, but for a B-movie it's better than most. Who knows, you may watch this movie and totally hate it. Maybe, ultimately, i'll be the only one that considers $LA$HER$ a few notches above the usual camp. That's fine by me.

I watched it and though far from great it didn't exactly suck either. It's a B movie with decent gore it's basically "The Running Man meets Saw" I wouldn't be handing out any awards for this but if you have absolutely nothing to watch there is worse than this out there.

Slashers would probably do well as a theater play, though the audience would probably have been hard to find. But we'll get back to this in the end of this review.

First let me say that it was interesting to watch a movie filmed with only one camera, and from what I was told they didn't do any retakes at all. One take per shot, to create that feeling of live tv. The trouble with single take scenes is of course that any mistakes from the actors (or any other mistake) becomes even worse, and the acting here is on a low level from the start.

The story is weak and very predictable, and the characters are pretty lame, making the actors look even worse. The twist at the end (that seems to be a rule for horror movies) is very unnecessary in my eyes, I won't give it away but I'll just say that the story would have been better without it.

But what really made me feel less for the movie was that you really had to use your imagination to see more than what was shown. That's what I mean when I say it would have been better off as a play. In a play you are used to imagining that the scenery is just there to give you a general idea of how the scene looks, but in a movie I want the scenery to be complete. For instance, why did the characters say they where trapped in a room when the walls where only pieces of cloth hanging down from the ceiling, or maybe a paper-thin wall? Why did the characters stand a couple of inches in front of the bad guys without doing anything like trying to hit them or something, and why did they just watch when one of the characters where killed right in front of them? Sure, you could imagine that the walls where really made of concrete (or whatever), and you could imagine that if one of them would have tried something they would have been killed, but this was not what was shown in the movie, you had to imagine it for yourself.

I can't really see what kind of movie audience that would really like Slashers. The horror fans will be disappointed by the lack of story, the splatter fans will be disappointed by the cheesy gore and effects (or lack of them), and the fans of japanese style ultra-violence are way better of with a film like Battle Royale or something. But if you're just out to see a different, easy-to-watch and violently funny movie, Slashers could be worth the 2 hours. But not more.

My vote is 5/10, i.e. barely worth the time.