4/20 Massacre

4/20 should be the rating of the film and the massacre was the hammy acting. One of the worst films I have seen in a long time!

This one has been waiting in the watchlist since before it came out, for obvious reasons, and is to be watched under obvious circumstances. And, you know, it really wasn't all that bad this time around. Grantedly, it's cheap, deeply flawed, silly and not exactly very memorable, but as far as fun goes.. You can have some with "4/20 Massacre".

The plot: A group of five women go camping in the woods to celebrate a friend's birthday over 4/20 weekend. But when they cross the turf of an illegal marijuana grow operation they must struggle to survive the living nightmare.

All female characters for the group of main protagonists was an unexpected choice, but a welcome one - how many stoner flicks do You know where the main character aren't guys? The choice proved successful through decent acting and quite unexpected, by a lot of people possibly despised, melodrama. The 'boring' parts. The overall plot is extremely short and thin, and doesn't go beyond synopsis. Sure, there are couple minor twists, all of which will strongly remind of many slashers made before over decades. Where there isn't killing, there is a lot of filler, melodrama, including romance, between the characters, lots of 420 jokes and endorsement, and the thing is, it works, the filler makes the pacing consistent enough, and the acting helps to enjoy it. The five friends are all different enough, from a devoted-to-rastaman stoner to the restrained birthday girl, or the scream queen of "4/20 Massacre". The killer, the weed man, is hilarious, skipping around real sneaky like in backgrounds, hitting and brain bongs and such, fun guy, not a lot of character though.

"4/20" can be visually confusing, style-wise. It takes place entirely during bright daylight, and that's understandable, but the post-production saw that the blues are well jacked up. All black tones were way too blue, and contrast was overused at times. It's shot well enough for a micro budget feature, but the editing is flawed.

It is an amateur hour movie.. But an effortful one, filled with enough stuff to keep the stoned one engaged. You'll know whether to watch it. My rating: 4/10.

The acting was better than I had anticipated and I actually liked the music. It was just kinda boring overall. If you're gonna have an entire movie out in the wilderness at least make it aesthetically pleasing. It was mainly just a bunch of dirt and some trees. Bleak.

Five girlfriends go camping in a national park to celebrate one's birthday. Unfortunately for them, there's a huge weed crop that someone is desperate to keep trespassers away from, and much bloodshed ensues.

I avoided this one for a long time because the title made me fear it was another stoner comedy masquerading as a horror homage but I'm happy to admit I was wrong. The biggest problem I had with 4/20 Massacre is that there are loooonnnng stretches of characters talking and then walking and then sitting and talking but things pick up by the third act. I was happy to see that the gore was plentiful and the kills were on camera; some of them were really mean-spirited which is always a plus. Is it great? No. But it's much better than many of the throwback slashers I've seen in recent years and I don't regret devoting 85 minutes to it.

The acting wasn't bad for the most part. The story and dialogue had a few interesting moments. I'll leave out how this movie develops and then turns out, to avoid spoilers, but I thought the last 40 minutes or so just plain sucked. Looked like the writers just phoned in the ending. The actors deserved a better script.