Slaughter Night

There has been a return to the Horror genre ( nederhorror) in Holland and SL8N8 is one of the movies. The movie starts off weak,nothing really special happening. I have never walked out of a movie but this movie is so boring that you walked out halfway? it's bad, in every way,the story is weak and the acting is bad and pretty lame special effects , poorly directed and its also just a little bit long which makes to loose interest,i fell asleep half way through it and That's a very bad sign, can Dutchhorror movies get much worse than this? SL8N8 was hyped as the ultimate Dutch horror movie, But with all of that being said, SL8N8 is probably worst than Doodeind. This is a horrible film and totally not worth seeing and a complete waste of time and money.

Quick! Name your top five all time favorite horror films from the Netherlands.

OK. How about just a top three? Top two? Any? Even I have to admit that when it comes to slasher flicks, the Netherlands sits on equal par with India and Madagascar as countries that I don't traditionally think of as great horror genre producing empires.

But then I got a surprise in the mail with the 2006 Netherlands slash and gash film Slaughter Night (Sl8n8). The films packaging caught my eye immediately with a young blonde in a red hoody sitting in a pool of water with a shotgun tucked behind her knees. Call me old fashioned, but this is the kind of box art that gets me to stop in my tracks when I'm scouring the video store shelves for a DVD to watch with the girlfriend late on a Saturday night.

But as we all know, box art does not necessary dictate good film so it was up to the first chapter of the flick to catch my attention.

Slaughter Night did not disappoint. It all begins in 1857 where a child murder has two girls bound in his wooden shack of an abode where heads of other unfortunate younglings lie perched atop spokes. It was as if Jason Voorhees' basement got pimped out by TLC's While You Were Out designers. The psycho is identified as one Andries Martiens and we later learn that before the death penalty was abolished in 1860, men accused of crimes were forced to go down into the mines and set off gas leaks that was 100% effective in dealing with their sentence.

All the movie has to do now is connect the 1857 death of Andries Martiens in the mine to a group of hot looking, expendable young things and you have a horror film that is the perfect compliment to the Pretty in Pink you had to sit through to get to your half of the double feature.

It all starts with the obligatory introductions that are quickly forgotten when an expected car accident leaves one of the starlings of the film (Victoria Koblenko) without a father figure. The accident is alarming and comes just one week after a similar shocking moment occurred in the opening set-up of Disturbia.

So, what better way to escape the memories of the horrific incident than to gather a group of friends and travel to a mine where her father was working on a book about the infamous Andries Martiens. Sounds good to me, and luckier still – that is exactly what happens. Cause let's face it, what's scarier than the ever running tunnels of a mine shaft. You don't have to look further than the overlooked 1981 film My Bloody Valentine to get the claustrophobic feel of being in a cold, dark and damp place where daylight is about as far away as me getting some action at the conclusion of this gore fest to understand how a mine shaft could be the perfect breeding ground for carnage.

Helping matters along is the Ouija Board that one of the expected victims brings along in an attempt to communicate with her father which coupled with their presence leads to a night that has moments that harkened me back to the glory days of Evil Dead where demonic possession of your best friends leads to some awkward moments of 'geez, I really liked you, but I am going to take you head off with a shovel'.

I must admit to sitting with a grin on my face for most of Slaughter Night and really, I have to definitive reason why. It's all been done before and without subtitles to boot. But this movie just got to me. The production values were good and the story was fun enough to sit back and enjoy while the body count added up like a tilted abacus. With enough decapitations to do five or six films, Slaughter Night delivers the goods and let's face facts…. how many times can you say that about a horror film you have never heard of? So for all you horror fans out there that rent and buy crap DVD after crap DVD based on cover art and quotes thrown on movie posters from reviewers that might not even exist, Slaughter Night is the perfect addition to any horror collection. It's gory. It's violent. And it's foreign, so at least you can tell your friends that you are broadening your intellectual scope.

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Before Sl8n8 there was Doodeind. Unfortunately Doodeind wasn't such a great movie. The actors were bad, the story was a cliché bomb and the special effects were (for what I've seen in other Dutch movies) awful. Victoria Koblenko played in both movies. She sucked in Doodeind but did a great job in Sl8n8! Maybe it's because she played the main part in Sl8n8 and had just a little one in Doodeind.

The story is really scary. You're lost in a mine and there's some freak-show chasing you with his big knife. But... it's your own fault! A girl got in a car accident with her father and he dies. He has this huge mine and the girl decides to check it out with some friends. They have fun and think "Hey! Why not make contact with some ghost while we're in a dark mine which is going to collapse in I don't know... like 5 minutes?". The story may be scary but it doesn't make any sense. But okay. They make contact with some fire-ghost freak-show and he starts chasing them. This movie gets really scary and there's lots of gore! So much better than Doodeind. If you get the chance... Watch this movie!

Kristel (Victoria Koblenko) after a night out partying is on her way home with her father. He's angry that she keeps secrets from him and is not paying attention to the road which results in a horrible car crash which in turn takes her father's life. After the funeral Kristel goes on a tour of a mineshaft (Kristel's dad was working on a book about a serial killer, the mine being where said killer died). Long story short, the people taking the tour get trapped, they whip out a Ouija board for no reason whatsoever and release the body-hopping spirit of the killer. Yes, you've seen this scenario play out a thousand times or more. The film is hopelessly derivative and lacks any form of originality whatsoever. But what it lacks for them, at least it does it reasonably well. This is one of the films that when it's over, you won't think twice about. Victoria Koblenko is pretty hot though and it was a shame the makers of the film didn't put her 'talents' on display, if you catch my drift.

My grade: C-

Tartan's DVD Extras (R1): Making of documentary; outtake reel; theatrical trailer; and trailers for "H6", "Hillside Strangler", "Sheitan", "Bloody Reunion", and "Perth"

I have seen this movie and must confess that it is nothing more and nothing less then a standard horror movie. The storyline is thin, but is that not always the case in a horror movie? The budget was not a Hollywood budget, as you can see in the movie. But i watched the movie in one track and i was not bored in the 90m minutes of so. Victoria was great in this movie and i hope she will make more movies in the future where we can see more of her. Go rent this movie in the DVD store,watch it, enjoy it and forget about it. It is not a movie where you will talk about the next day. I give it a 6/10, and a 8/10 for victoria (when will playboy call her?)