Slayer

Kevin Van Hook has been pretty busy lately, with several titles released this year. Generally although he has yet to direct a great film, at the very least his films have had interesting casts', and solid effects work. Slayer has a lot of silly macho military type dialog, and humor that drew some groans from me, but overall I enjoyed it. The action was well choreographed, the characters' likable and easy to root for, and it had some bloody scenes, even though it was more of an action film. If your looking for something more serious, don't look here, everything has a kind of kiddie comic book style feel, is never actually scary, and if it weren't for a few bloody bits, this could really be a pg-13 movie. All in all the cast seemed to be having fun making Slayer, and the action never let up. If your a Lynda Carter fan, you'll get a nice feeling of nostalgia watching this clever new spin on Vampire lore.

It would be easy to list those ways in which we are warned, well before watching, that this is surely going to be a lackluster mess. It would be easy because there are a great many of them. Instead of focusing on that, let's just cut to the chase, and talk about things like the glaring CGI of muzzle flashes from the soldiers' firearms, or the script that quickly comes off as dubious, halfhearted, and no more than perfunctory. There's Kevin VanHook's middling direction, and action sequences that are, shall we say, variable in their strength (though some aren't half bad!). There are some recognizable names and faces appearing in this TV movie, but neither they nor any others on hand are specifically being required to act - though at least they're having a good time? Ludek Drizhal's music is the most purposefully bland pablum I've heard in a film in quite a while, and that some cues play to the light humor that's peppered throughout is A Choice. Practical effects and special makeup look great; on a reported total production budget of $2 million, the same won't necessarily be said of instances of digital effects. But we knew all this before we ever pressed play on 'Slayer,' so if we don't like the viewing experience, we have no one but ourselves to blame.

Dialogue is generally painfully blunt and exact, and often simply bad; with exceptions in both directions, the scene writing is mostly only rudimentarily serviceable. We do at least have a complete, cohesive story on our hands; how compelling it is constitutes another matter. In fairness, there are actually some genuinely good ideas scattered around; then again, some ideas are not so great. But hey, it's not like anyone involved had any illusions about what they were making - schlock this mediocre doesn't happen by accident. That does beg the question of who might actually enjoy this, what merit this held in the eyes of those who participated, and how the Sci Fi Channel could have ever seen fit to greenlight it in the first place. It's not significantly fun or thrilling; what gap could a consciously low-grade production possibly fill? I don't have the answers to these questions. I just know that the picture offers little more than the most baseline level of diversion that any conglomeration of light and sound does. VanHook and his cast and crew succeeded in making an almost perfectly tiresome, dull, unexciting feature. But to what end? If someone does manage to extract meaningful entertainment here then I'm glad for them; I just don't know how they do it. Watch 'Slayer' if you want, but I just can't offer a major reason why you should.

A film that deserves to be thrown into the bowls of hell, Slayer takes what we know about vampires and turns it upside down into the crap stain of cinema. How can this thing even exist? I swear, just watching a few minutes of this...film... is enough to put you in a diabetic coma.

Okay, so the basic plot to Slayer is that a bunch of soldiers encounter vampires in the tropics and naturally battle them to the death. It's kinda like "Dog Soldiers" except far more stupid. At least "Dog Soldiers" was pretty cool for a low-budget film but this looks like it has been done with much less money and effort. On top of that, it breaks so many traditional rules to vampires that it insults the blood-sucking genre. The vampires are ridiculous and a select few are incredibly annoying. The terrible acting doesn't help that much either, even coming from the likes of Casper Van Dien.

This movie makes "Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus" look like a masterpiece (a more interesting one at that) and "Dracula 3000" more dignified. I'll add insult to injury by not giving Slayer any remote bit of credit or rating. Yeah, that's how bad it really is. Every copy of this must be destroyed, erased from existence. By NOT watching this, you'll save yourself a few hours of your precious life. Slayer, the parasite of the world of cinema. Thank you and good night!

There's a limit to what you expect from a Sci-Fi channel film given the budgets they have to work with. That said, this film kept me happily entertained from start to finish. The casting for the most part was excellent as was the locales where this was shot. Kevin Grevioux (Grieves) deserves special mention for an outstanding performance. His low pitched voice, size, and natural acting ability were well suited to this role. Ditto for Joyce Giraud (Estrella) although she had a much smaller / limiting part. Look, it's a vampire film. You've got to suspend your sense of disbelief a bit even to want to watch the thing. Once you've done that however, this film rocks!

This movie is a complete mess. Beginning to end there are little or no breaks in the "action". But if CVD is in it it has to be watchable.... Nope. They skimped on everything and I know where the entire budget went for the movie, the final villain costume. Which admittedly for the budget this film likely had was "sort of" impressive. The vampires in this movie aren't vampires so much as blood sucking monsters. They follow no conventional lore of what a vampire is. Aside from drinking blood. The worst part of the movie is the fact that there are no breaks to tell a real story. In reality it's much like most cheap martial arts movies. Fighting and bloodshed tell the story or pad the runtime. Makeup is horrible for the run of the mill vampires. Most of the vamps wear masks or other face coverings. Most likely to hide the fact they use the same stunt actors over and over again. It's boring and a hard pass as far as me recommending it for someone to watch.