Slashers

6 people (Sarah Joslyn Crowder, Kieran Keller, Tony Curtis Blondell and more) have agreed to be a part of a Japanese reality show in which they are locked in a creepy house and stalked and killed by 3 sickos (a wonderful performance by Neil Napier and an alright job by Christopher Piggins). Whoever gets out alive wins millions and millions of dollars. But who will get out alive? Maurice Devereaux does a much better job at writing than directing. The script is surprisingly original and smart.

The film is filled with bad actors. However, there are a few gems in here: Kieran Keller, who has done nothing and has nothing planned was actually pretty good IMO, and Tony Curtis Blondell is up and rising. But the best, IMO, was Neil Napier, who played 2 killers very well.

Out of all the "Reality Show" horrors, this is one of the better ones, along side with "My Little Eye" and Kolobos.

A true work of Genius. I found "Slashers" to be a magnificent film. It's social comment was fantastic. I loved the concept of people killing one another for money. I also liked the idea of the women having to remove their clothes to become more popular, a great satirical comment about today's "Big Brother"/Jodie Price generation. Some of the dialogue was so clever, for example lines like "those dollar bills that you worship do not bare the face of the lord" really reflect the true intellect of the writer. This film was a great piece of social satire, reminiscent of George A Romero's "Dawn Of The Dead."

10/10

OK, I'll admit it, I actually loved this film! I couldn't stop watching it, perhaps partly because of how poor the production was, or maybe because of the simplistically wonderful concept.

The acting is TERRIBLE, the direction is out of a third rate Mexican soap opera, the sound, lighting and editing are ridiculously bad and the plot is as thin as the chance anyone other than serious horror fans will like this movie.

I think it is so funny that this is a movie about a Japanese reality TV show set in America, but cast with Canadian actors with accents as thick as Canadian bacon.

Do yourself a favor and watch the film, just don't expect much out of it.

i have to admit, amongst all the overabundance of reality shows and reality rip-offs i.e. Blair Witch Project; Series 7; The ST. Francisville Experiment..i more than expected, i automatically assumed, that $LA$HER$ would be completely a waste of time after reading it's review in Fango. I mean, with lame character names like PREACHER MAN and CHAINSAW CHARLIE, i was sure this was going to be as horrible, if not worse than, THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING. However, i came across a screener and sat down to watch it less than 3 hours ago and was surprisingly impressed. As a whole, the movie isn't the best thing i've ever seen but it had some unexpected charisma (one being the commercial break situations).With the exception of Chainsaw Charlie, who could possibly be a descendant of Jar Jar Binks, the villians or slashers, if you will, were at times over the top but not too annoying. The story played out quite frantically and the actual contestants weren't bad actors at all. Don't get me wrong, i don't see OSCAR knocking on any of their doors for this one, but they were pretty good for a B-movie cast. What i found to be the best part of $LA$HER$ was the fact that it focused on the characters more than the actual hunting. Most B-movies attempt to do this to keep their films from being gorey fluff, but fail because the dialogue is as bad as the frights. This one captured something special though, perhaps it was because there weren't many stereotypical characters. All the blue prints were there to elaborate on, but instead we see these characters for who they are through their stories told in between being hunted. They could have had the "token" personalities but they didn't. The writing could use some touch ups, but for a B-movie it's better than most. Who knows, you may watch this movie and totally hate it. Maybe, ultimately, i'll be the only one that considers $LA$HER$ a few notches above the usual camp. That's fine by me.

Slashers would probably do well as a theater play, though the audience would probably have been hard to find. But we'll get back to this in the end of this review.

First let me say that it was interesting to watch a movie filmed with only one camera, and from what I was told they didn't do any retakes at all. One take per shot, to create that feeling of live tv. The trouble with single take scenes is of course that any mistakes from the actors (or any other mistake) becomes even worse, and the acting here is on a low level from the start.

The story is weak and very predictable, and the characters are pretty lame, making the actors look even worse. The twist at the end (that seems to be a rule for horror movies) is very unnecessary in my eyes, I won't give it away but I'll just say that the story would have been better without it.

But what really made me feel less for the movie was that you really had to use your imagination to see more than what was shown. That's what I mean when I say it would have been better off as a play. In a play you are used to imagining that the scenery is just there to give you a general idea of how the scene looks, but in a movie I want the scenery to be complete. For instance, why did the characters say they where trapped in a room when the walls where only pieces of cloth hanging down from the ceiling, or maybe a paper-thin wall? Why did the characters stand a couple of inches in front of the bad guys without doing anything like trying to hit them or something, and why did they just watch when one of the characters where killed right in front of them? Sure, you could imagine that the walls where really made of concrete (or whatever), and you could imagine that if one of them would have tried something they would have been killed, but this was not what was shown in the movie, you had to imagine it for yourself.

I can't really see what kind of movie audience that would really like Slashers. The horror fans will be disappointed by the lack of story, the splatter fans will be disappointed by the cheesy gore and effects (or lack of them), and the fans of japanese style ultra-violence are way better of with a film like Battle Royale or something. But if you're just out to see a different, easy-to-watch and violently funny movie, Slashers could be worth the 2 hours. But not more.

My vote is 5/10, i.e. barely worth the time.