The Slaughter

This movie starts out as a potential cult film, then quickly proceeds to take a Kamakazi dive into suck. Every film festival that gave this movie an award should have its license revoked for incompetence. The "acting", and I used the term "acting" sarcastically, will give you a headache. A porno has better acting...and better lighting, and better story. The actors had absolutely no chemistry and were too clueless to know when they were suppose to be scared. The director/writer was probably too busy dreaming up fx gimics that haven't been used since the invention of sound. A note to any "filmmakers", if you don't have the budget to make a real horror movie, then at least do yourself a favor and make it a horror comedy. That way people can at least get a laugh out of the campy entertainment value. My roommates made me do laundry and dishes for a week, and I'm officially banned from bringing home anymore horror flicks.

Dana (Jessica Ellis) and her boyfriend Tyler (Terry Erioski) own a cleaning company and they travel with his stepbrother Iggy (Zak Kilberg) to clean up an old house for the arrogant real state agent Carl (Brad Milne). They invite the promiscuous Heather (Laura Stein); her boyfriend Brandon (Travis Wood) and the pothead Razz (Billy Beck) that are their friends, to help them. They meet Carl and his secretary Alexandra (Jen Alex Gonzalez) in the house and when they clean the basement, there is a bad smell and they find a book made of flesh. Iggy translates the text and discovers that the place is a portal to an evil female demon that was summoned one hundred years ago. He also discovers that a sin would be capable to awake the She Demon (Adriana Esquivel) and the group decides to have no sex in the house. But it is too late since Heather and Brandon are alone in a bedroom. Now the She Demon is unleashed and they find that they are trapped in the house.

"The Slaughter" is a low-budget movie with flawed characters (Carl and Alexandra are unbearable; Brandon and Razz are douchebags); poor locations and special effects; and a screenplay that should be improved. The makeup and the camera work are good and in the end, considering the budget, this Z-movie is enjoyable and entertains. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "O Massacre" ("The Slaughter")

After reading the previous comments, I knew this film was never going to be a classic, it didn't even look good enough to be a b-movie. However, I've always been a sucker for the old "demons run amok in a haunted house" scenario (a la Night of the Demons) so I decided to give it bash. After a fantastic opening scene for breast fans, it started on a very fast decline...

As expected, the script, acting and what passed for storyline were quite dreadful but the worst thing about it was that, quite obviously, the writer/director/teaboy had actually stopped believing in the horror element himself (and you can actually pinpoint the exact moment), gave up and tried to quickly turn it into a "Shaun of the Dead" style zombie comedy. The irony being that one of the worst straight actors in the film (all of them are pretty unlikeable characters) - the anti-establishment rich boy, turned out to have a decent line in comedy acting, both verbally and physically. If the director had noticed this from the start, he could have made an entirely different film. Instead, coupled with some quite amateurish splatter effects, it ended up being possibly the most non-committal horror film I think I've ever seen.

I'll say this, "The Slaughter" starts out great. The opening scene with a bevy of the most beautiful witches (or witch worshipers, or whatever they are) that have probably ever graced the screen this side of porn getting naked, seductively self-mutilating themselves (!!) and calling to life the demon-woman pictured on the DVD cover is up there with the phantasmagoria of Ken Russell in his prime. It's very MTV but also effective...all double exposures and reaching hands, muted, digitized images and an eerie score. I was already prepared to accept I'd gotten my $1 rental money's worth for taking a gamble on an unknown DVD with a neato cover. Had it gone on in this way I was prepared to call this the most original fear film to have come out in decades, but it couldn't keep it up.

Cut to a bunch of beautiful, stupid young people "required" to be in a haunted house for one of the lamest reasons ever (they're cleaning it) and we're back on the same ol' territory as any run-of-the mill haunted house flick. The good news is that this is a dumb movie about idiotic people made by people who appear to be quite smart. The characters are oddly likable because it's clear the actors are talented and were having a ball (I particularly enjoyed the brain-fried stoner and the slutty girl). Unfortunately, the tone of the film goes from being scary-with-some-humor to out and out ridiculous and it descends into "student film" territory. I wish we were having as much fun as the people making the movie seemed to have been...either let us in on the joke or let us laugh AT you, but when people in a movie on a screen are laughing at themselves it seldom is fun for an audience.

The script has some fun one-liners and fast-paced dialog, the effects, though incredibly cheap, are fun, the gore is gratuitous and gloppy and the make-up on the demon-woman is really, really nice. The actors are all beautiful and fun to watch, the attack scenes (when they come--you have to wait a good 50 minutes! Sheesh!) are satisfying. Too bad the witch just never really DOES anything, too bad there's just no plot at all and too bad we've seen most of this before a million times. The speed-monster-metal score is a nice touch, though it doesn't really suit the material that well.

Oh, who am I fooling--this movie blows! It really is something only a slightly-feeble-minded 12 year old could truly enjoy, but as a dirt-cheap rental before Halloween I found it was actually amusing enough. Next!

This movie was exactly what I thought it would be. Another run of the mill B-Horror movie (and saying that it B is being quite polite). The movie had nothing to offer, I can't say there was anything good to be said for it. The effects were worse than some horror movies I saw in the eighties, which begs me to ask what the budget was. It was terrible at being comical, terrible at being horrific, although it was horrifically comical for being so poorly done, does that make it worth watching? No. Simply put, do NOT waste your time watching this. If you enjoy the occasional B movie like I do, I recommend not watching this one. It is that terrible.