Kristy

"The Strangers" meet the university (student), except it was better than The Strangers. The Strangers was a bit of a downer juxtaposing chance and violence. They pick you and you die. True, while unsystematic random violence is to be feared it can hardly stand alone as dominant story-telling. Yea need a reason. 'WE' need a reason. This movie....Kristy.... provides that reason by means of meager, yet plausible, cultism. The first half of the movie is good scary stuff, the back half.............an action film. Run for your life kind of mania. But I nevertheless enjoyed it for some strange reason. Her expression perhaps.....................I'm not sure exactly, but i believe that was it. She was very convincing.

I found this movie to be a mixed bag of positives and negatives. The story is pretty weak with it mostly being a cat-and-mouse chase where the main character is being hunted down by a cult group. I found the cybercult to be an interesting idea then made snuff films for the underground website they called their victims Kristy because the name of Latin origin means "follower of God". Other than that the movie is mostly about the main character running or hiding from them. It makes the plot easily predictable and is repetitive with her going to current places around campus. I do like the atmosphere of the movie with its chilling opening and how the villains could be anywhere around campus. And I do like that later in the movie the main character decides to fight back against the group and makes smart decisions throughout.

One other flaw is that the movie contains cheap and fake scares throughout.

PROS: A good part about the movie was the idea as a whole. The way the scenes were set up allowed for a great amount of fear and horror. The script also allowed for the main character to be resilient, not just for the sake of the movie, but just in general. There was nothing that happened that couldn't actually happen. Although this made the movie very readable, it didn't take away from the fear that it naturally would instill. A movie with a strong, independent, female lead will always be a fun watch!

CONS: The most aggravating part of the movie was the ending. There was so much more that could have been developed, but it just got cut short. I got quite frustrated at this fact because the movie lacked a lot of substance during the actual process, therefore I relayed heavily on the ending to give me that extra umph to propel the film. Another part that could have been improved was the acting. For some reason all the actors felt very stagnant. The main female character had pretty much two factions to her acting, 1. CONFUSION, and 2. BADA** MODE. Which are two good characteristics, but not the only things you need to be the star of a film. The final things that got me really angry was the fact that the main villains always found a way to find the main girl. It is an entire freaking college, and somehow they always found a way to find the girl. This gave the film a rather unbelievable factor.

www.chorror.com

I was not exactly expecting much with a title as nondescript as "Kristy". There were also no big name actors to speak of it seems. The news that there were alternative titles like "Random" and "Satanic" was not too encouraging as well. I was just in the mood for a horror film one lazy afternoon so I went and watched this. Turns out it was not exactly horror, but it was not bad at all.

The first frame of the opening credits was the first surprise. It showed the TWC logo. So the Weinstein Company was actually involved with this film! That was a surprise because the publicity was so low key, almost non-existent. It did give me some positive feedback about the film I was about to watch though, as TWC is known for its Oscar quality films.

The film opens with the scene of a girl being killed by a couple of men wearing hoodies and left in a grassy field. She had a big slash across her neck and a letter K carved on her right cheek. Photos and video of this crime was uploaded onto the Internet, announcing that it was the time to kill Kristy. To kill Kristy is to kill God supposedly. "Kristy" it appears is any girl they think is "pretty, pure and blessed", and therefore should be hunted down and killed.

One Thanksgiving, Justine was the only girl left in their college campus as everyone else went home. When she went to the gas station to buy some supplies, she encounters a strange girl in a pink hoodie with piercings on her lip. When she got back to her college though, she became the target of Pink Hoodie and her group of her hoodie-wearing hoodlums all wanting to see her dead.

Haley Bennett should be a bigger star some day. She looks great and she did very well in the lead role of Justine. She was able to portray the fear and determination of her smart, never-say-die character. This was no timid damsel-in-distress here. This girl was determined to survive. However, as Justine was alone and outnumbered, will she survive or not?

I was surprised to see that Ashley Greene (better known as vampy vampire Alice Cullen in the "Twilight" films) as the main antagonist, with internet username DrkViolet801. Her face was barely seen at all, hidden by her pink hoodie. They could have used another no-name actress and we would not have known the difference.

This film is not exactly horror though. If you like gore, there was not too much of that as well. I would call it a suspense-thriller, and a good one at that. I felt the use of music, along with the whistling and the whispering, was very effective in creating the thickly tense atmosphere necessary for this film to succeed.

With a lot of suspension of disbelief, I actually liked this film as it is. This is not any deep film to analyze or think too much about. Just sit back and enjoy your racing pulse as you watch it. By the way, there is an extra scene after all the closing credits roll up, if you still care to wait up and watch it. 6/10.

Kristy got only a few elements of horror and is in my opinion rather a movie of the thriller genre. A young woman is hunted by a bunch of wild gooses on a campus while (almost) everybody else is gone because of Thanksgiving break. Production and acting are solid and so is the story and movie. Kristy: worth a watch - if you like the genre or the theme of crazies hunting someone. If not, don't bother watching.