Beach Massacre at Kill Devil Hills

I rented this movie the other night, and I thought I was going to be watching a bloody horror movie. Instead, I got a very well done character movie. Being a woman myself, I found I connected with the characters and the situation that they were in.

This movie takes on some very intense themes about male violence towards women, that you don't see all the time in this genre. Specially with the twists that happen. I found myself thinking what would I do if this happened to me and my friends? Yes there were small things that could have been improved on, but I saw a post on the films fan page that said it was a micro low budget film, so taking that into consideration, I feel like they did a good job.

I would recommend this film, just on the fact that it tried hard to be something that other horror movies aren't.

This movie sucked. I guess the makers of this filmed only spent a couple hundred dollars to film this movie. I don't suggest anyone wasting there $1. 50 to rent this movie. It doesn't even end right. What idiot came up with this idea for a movie. Maybe if the makers would have thought it through a little better then this, it might have had a chance to score a rating of 3.

Simple story. A single mother heads to her parents beach house when her ex husband gets out of jail for assaulting her and their daughter. She brings along a few friends and when she gets there, she finds her sister is filming a short film with a couple of people as well. Meanwhile her ex and his uncle are looking for revenge and killing anyone who gets in their way. This could have been a great thriller. It has a lot of talented people involved and they do good work. The main problem with this movie is its so imcompentently made that you cant help but laugh. Lets begin with the sound. There are scenes where there are people having a conversation and they simply play music over it. There's another scene where the mother and father are in the same room talking and the sound is completely different. Its like the mother was re- recorded (badly) in another location and it was dubbed in. The second problem is the editing. Scenes begin and end with no transition. There's a scene with three girls in a hot tub talking about nothing and there are maybe five jump-cuts. The movie is simply pieced together badly. Third, the ages of the girls varies wildly. The lead is 38 (irl) and shes playing as a girl in the mid to late 20s. Taya Parker does an OK job but shes bland and her inexperience shows. One of the worst is Deborah Funes who plays Charliee. Funes has a VERY thick accent and its difficult to understand her lines in the movie. We are also supposed to believe shes a model. (NO NO NO NO) There are others, but the rest of the cast does a good job for the most part. This could have been a lot better, but it does look great and everyone puts effort into it. A shout out to Diana Prince and Elissa Dowling who are great in the movie.

(PS) The director has the balls to plug one of his upcoming films in the movie. Im serious. The girls are sitting on a couch looking at dvds and they start talking about how great "The Mangled" is. Funny thing, the director has an upcoming movie called The Mangled and it has the same plot.....shameless. I don't know if I should be impressed or embarrassed.

Beach Massacre at Kill Devil Hill kind of surprised me, but not necessarily in a good way. From the attention grabbing cover of a young woman in a bikini, with a knife, body, and blood, one would think this has all the classic markings of being a B level slasher flick. While it by all means is B level, it is actually less your typical teen slasher flick, and tries to take things in a more story driven direction. Unfortunately, the budget and talent just wasn't here to successfully pull off what they tried to do.

1- The cuts, transitions, and in general the editing is awful, even by B movie standards. Jarring and distracting camera cuts all through the movie, awkward dialogue with possibly some mistakes that weren't edited out correctly, loud music that doesn't cut out at the right time and drowns out the first part of dialogue scenes. Some of this stuff may have been design decisions rather than all being mistakes, but it all came off as distracting and almost unfinished.

2- the acting, while not "good", also wasn't terrible for your average indi film. Some dialogue scenes tended to draw out longer than needed and the writing was hit and miss, but I've seen worse.

3- The story tried to be something more than your typical indi horror slasher, but it just didn't all gel together very well, and came off as long winded. This movie was certainly a slow burner with a majority of the film time spent introducing characters, the plot situation and multiple different threads. While somewhat unique, it just wasn't very interesting, and while there is a twist in how the movie ends, it leaves you more thinking "ok....?" than being surprised or entertained by it.

IMO, anyone looking for some slasher movie fun will likely be disappointed, and people who are wanting a dark story will want something with more quality and meat to it.

Take out all the "artistic" beach shots and the movie would be a much, much, much shorter incoherent mess of bad acting and uncomfortable hot tub scenes..

Then take those cut "artistic" beach shots and put together a live wallpaper for your laptop, and you will have made something decent and worthwhile.