Skateway Massacre

We saw this a while back. That roller rink was a creepy setting and was a nice throwback to the 70's and 80's. It made me want to roller skate again. Fun indie horror that could have used a bigger budget.

This is about as low budget as it gets. The acting is at best mediocre, and at its worse, plain terrible. And yet a couple of characters manage to elicit sympathy. Robert Posey even approaches something resembling charming likability on a couple of occasions (at least, I wouldn't kick him out of bed on a cold night).

Direction and camera work is cliched at best, and sloppy at worst, as is the writing and editing. Yet I willingly watched the film to its predictable end. Most of the film is glacial character ... um ...familiarisation. The action all happens in the third act. The perpetrator's identity is obvious pretty-well immediately, and any attempt to rotate through diversions and misdirections is managed ham-fistedly. There is nothing scary about the slicing and dicing in this gorefestlet, and scenes that try for tension are as phoned in as the film's many prank calls. But somehow, somehow, this film remains fun. Maybe it gets away with being so bad that it's good. Or at least not offensively devoid of any likability. Or maybe I just had a thing for Posey. We shall never know.

What could have been a throwback to the 1980s slasher film Death Rink becomes a throwaway instead. This movie just about commits the unpardonable sin of being boring.

The main problem with Death Rink is it takes too long to get to the kills.

There is too much talk trying to masquerade as character development. And the adequate acting makes this film just tolerable.

The one plus for this film was the running time. The movie runs under seventy-five minutes. (A slow seventy-five minutes).

I was able to pinpoint the killer and why long before the revelation. You should be able to as well.

DUMB.

When I sat down to watch the movie "Death Rink" (aka "Skateway Massacre"), then I must admit that I was expecting more in the horror department, as the movie is labeled as being a horror movie. Little did I know that I was in for a movie that was 95% footage of young people sitting around discussing relationship problems, talking about how and who they want to get together with or had been with, and such. So horror is not really something that the movie would be correctly labeled as.

Unless you consider the total lack of horror elements as being horror. Something to think about, huh?

The storyline in the movie was just too mundane and slow paced, and when the killing did finally start, it was just too little and too late, especially as the kill scenes were just dubious and had no energy in them. Nor did I for one second buy into it that the people were in mortal danger and were being killed off. It just had that whole vibe missing from it.

It should be said, though, that the casting was actually good, because they had some interesting and well-enough talented actors and actresses on the cast list. Sure, these were performers that I wasn't familiar with, but the majority of them actually put on good enough performances, just a shame that they had nothing much to work with.

If you are looking for a horror movie, then you might as well go ahead and skip on this movie from writer and director Daniel Zubiate. But if you are looking for a movie that feels like a trip back to the 1980s and watch young people sit around socializing, goofing off and being adolescent, then by all means this movie is something you might find enjoyment in.

The lack of horror in this movie is what ultimately killed it off for me - pardon the pun. And my rating of this movie lands on a generous four out of ten stars. It was a watchable movie, sure, but a rather mundane, bland and uneventful movie, mind you.

As I drop trou and position myself onto the throne, I found myself thinking about this movie and how it made me feel. There was a plop, followed by several plops in quick succession. My eyes, they smarted and I had to breath through my mouth. Then, like magic, it all became clear, this movie is the biggest load of poop that I've seen, do not watch it, skate on by.