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The first ten minutes of this movie is a direct rip off of scream. The rest is just a hopeless plot...hopeless acting and tonnes and tonnes of bad jokes, smoking and drinking.

0.5/10

one of the worst horror movies ever!

At a German college, wealthy student graduates (of various nationalities) break into an upscale health resort for a final get-together little realizing it will be lights out for most of them when a masked killer with a machete crashes their party. The acting is uneven, the accents (British, Aussie, German, etc.) take some getting used to and the ending is awful, but this is still one of the best of the recent slasher movies. The setting is different, the director makes good work of his locations, there are a few creative death scenes (the best involving a water slide) and it's thankfully devoid of that annoying post-SCREAM sense of self-referential humor. I also enjoyed the performance of (and dialogue given to) Elena Uhlig.

Score: 5 out of 10

The Pool might not be the most original horror film out there, but it has much more to offer than it's lousy rating on here and uninspired DVD artwork might suggest.

On one hand, you have early roles by stars James McAvoy and Isla Fisher, but on the other, you have a mostly engaging and well shot slasher tale that's certainly no more incomprehensible than most of its contemporaries. While there are a few detours into 90's slasher style camp and pop psychology, The Pool mostly has a much more European giallo meets 80's slasher feel with bright colors, interesting shots, and some really nasty death sequences.

There are definitely a fair share of cringe-worthy moments and you'll definitely wish the killer would shut up once they've been unmasked, but the few inventive death scenes and moments of suspense make up for any of the surface flaws.

As I have said before, I rent low-budget or unknown horror when I can. I find this one quite by accident and put it on my Netflix account. I was pleastly suprised. After sitting through less then steller movies such as Terror Toons and Camp Blood one and two this was quite good.

Sure its the same old slasher/Ten Little Indians formula. A bunch of teens in a place they shouldn't be and locked up inside as it is a party start getting killed, so the killer must be...do do dooooo. ONE OF THEM!!! Like the guy before me, I agree some of the death scences are pretty cool, the waterslide comes to mind...The acting is so/so..Nice to see Miller getting some work...It's funny I was just watching late,late night reruns of that show..That's My Bush the other day.

Anyway, this movie a decent staple and overall not bad. You need these kind of movie to help push stars and propel other movies higher. As Horror goes, there is much worse and while the ending and the killer/killers Motive is lame the movie is an enjoyable way to kill a couple hours.

If I could rate the killing-scenes alone, I would probably give an 8, they are really awesome, with an original and inventive use of constantly the same weapon. Unfortunately these scenes had to be patched together by some story, and here this movie fails utterly, the story is as flimsy as cardboard and full of improbabilities. They made it into a who-dunnit (which at least makes you sit the whole thing out), but if you expect a serious motivation from the at last revealed killer you'll be disappointed: the script provides him with a lame self-pitying whine that hardly explains his totally disproportional killing-spree (but I guess we can't expect a psychopath to be rational anyway!).

Another problem: the guys and girls are all equally unsympathetic, all wise-cracking party-animals, loudmouthed and wannabe cool (the guys) and lascivious (the girls), so you couldn't care less if any of them got to be killed anyway. The acting is over-all below par (even from nowadays famous James McAvoy, how he got involved is a mystery in itself!) and most of the actors talk English with heavy accents (apparently this is a German movie but for some reason shot in Prague). And for a movie about wild and hormone-driven teens that constantly talk about sex and are illegally partying in a desolated pool it's surprisingly prudish, with most girls wearing a one-pieced bathing-suit and all the guys colossal XXL-sized trunks.

In conclusion: just watchable for the awesome killings!