Sl8n8

There has been a return to the Horror genre ( nederhorror) in Holland and SL8N8 is one of the movies. The movie starts off weak,nothing really special happening. I have never walked out of a movie but this movie is so boring that you walked out halfway? it's bad, in every way,the story is weak and the acting is bad and pretty lame special effects , poorly directed and its also just a little bit long which makes to loose interest,i fell asleep half way through it and That's a very bad sign, can Dutchhorror movies get much worse than this? SL8N8 was hyped as the ultimate Dutch horror movie, But with all of that being said, SL8N8 is probably worst than Doodeind. This is a horrible film and totally not worth seeing and a complete waste of time and money.

Before Sl8n8 there was Doodeind. Unfortunately Doodeind wasn't such a great movie. The actors were bad, the story was a cliché bomb and the special effects were (for what I've seen in other Dutch movies) awful. Victoria Koblenko played in both movies. She sucked in Doodeind but did a great job in Sl8n8! Maybe it's because she played the main part in Sl8n8 and had just a little one in Doodeind.

The story is really scary. You're lost in a mine and there's some freak-show chasing you with his big knife. But... it's your own fault! A girl got in a car accident with her father and he dies. He has this huge mine and the girl decides to check it out with some friends. They have fun and think "Hey! Why not make contact with some ghost while we're in a dark mine which is going to collapse in I don't know... like 5 minutes?". The story may be scary but it doesn't make any sense. But okay. They make contact with some fire-ghost freak-show and he starts chasing them. This movie gets really scary and there's lots of gore! So much better than Doodeind. If you get the chance... Watch this movie!

The entire premise of SL8N8 is that a group of young people get stuck down in a Dutch mine, because someone above ground switched off the power for the elevator.

The group learns this, and tries to make their best of spending a night down in a mine.

Halfway through the film, one of the characters walks up to the mine. Totally casually, as if this moron actually expects the thing to work. The morons turn out to be the filmmakers because: THE ELEVATOR DOES SUDDENLY MAGICALLY WORK.

The character goes up. Not surprised. Not alerting his friends that the elevator works again.

It doesn't end there: the character does walk around above ground for a while but decides he doesn't like it there. And goes back down into the mine. By elevator.

A film that makes such a massive mistake does not deserve praise. And this is just the biggest mistakes, it has many more illogical moments. That combined with the fact that it rips off so many scenes from other films that already existed at the time, makes this yet another disappointment in Dutch horror. Partially blame Dutch producers who are too afraid to try something that is new, even if it's a perfectly mainstream thing.

Sl8 N8 is the Dutch answer to My Bloody Valentine... and done much, much better. Obviously the budget wasn't the largest here, but the director and crew seemed to make the most of what they had. Effects were clearly limited and relied on camera shakes and piercing noises on moments with high tension. While this effect can easily be overdone, it isn't here. Instead of going overboard and having these effects become distracting like other low budget horror films that try the same, here it is practiced with careful restraint and just the right touch.

Sl8 N8 also gives us a killer with a purpose. Our supernatural slasher isn't killing at random or just for fun, oh no... He is trying to escape from hell or limbo through a satanic ritual that requires the heads of 8 victims. And just where would our story be without a cliché connection that links our main character and her dead father to our setting. There are other cliché's, but none that really take away from the film, after all they are clichés so they do fall into what you've come to expect category. Hey, I never said that it wasn't simple...

The gore factor slowly increases steadily throughout the film at just the right spots and should satisfy a good percentage of gore hounds by the end of the film... Giving us everything from brains to blood to fire to almost cannabilism - OK, let's call it really graphic flesh tearing via mouths.

All in all, Sl8 N8 is a nice Dutch edition to the horror genre, again it's nothing new, but it's effective and definitely worth a watch on a rainy day.

6.5/10

The feeling I got after this movie was (surprisingly): hey, this is not bad! Not bad at all - for Dutch horror. I must admit that I've never seen any other Dutch horror-movie to compare it to ('De Vierde Man' comes to mind, but that's a movie from the mid-'80s and i'd rather call it 'mystic' than 'horror') - but that doesn't matter much. What dóes matter is that this movie isn't bad at all.

All and all, the story-line is nothing spectacular. In fact, it's all been done só many times that if somebody'd quickly sum up the events of this movie, you'd expect it to be extremely boring. However, it's a fact that most of the time, in horror, clichés work great. And because the horror-genre isn't so terrible overdone here in the Netherlands, the people that made this movie have a fresh(ish) approach to all those clichés, and turn it into something that's quite enjoyable to watch.

So, strangely enough, here we have a film that's stuffed to the brim with cliché (even the most corny horror-line ever ('we're gonna have to split up') is used) but that's still enjoyable to watch on an otherwise lost Saturday-evening. And not ónly because it happens to be Dutch.