Kristy

I found this movie to be a mixed bag of positives and negatives. The story is pretty weak with it mostly being a cat-and-mouse chase where the main character is being hunted down by a cult group. I found the cybercult to be an interesting idea then made snuff films for the underground website they called their victims Kristy because the name of Latin origin means "follower of God". Other than that the movie is mostly about the main character running or hiding from them. It makes the plot easily predictable and is repetitive with her going to current places around campus. I do like the atmosphere of the movie with its chilling opening and how the villains could be anywhere around campus. And I do like that later in the movie the main character decides to fight back against the group and makes smart decisions throughout.

One other flaw is that the movie contains cheap and fake scares throughout.

"Kristy" has a young university student, Justine, staying on campus for the Thanksgiving break and forgoing returning home until Christmas. Her rich roommate Nicole, who had originally planned on staying with her, goes to see her family last-minute in Aspen, leaving Justine and the campus security guards alone for the Thanksgiving holiday. After taking a trip to a rural convenience store, Justine runs into a group of young people who seem to want trouble, and upon returning to her empty dorm, finds herself in for one hell of a night.

Maybe it's because I love a good college campus slasher, or maybe it's because I'm a grad student who's about to spend his first Thanksgiving alone (albeit in New York City, not in the backwoods in which this film is situated), but I was completely taken in by this film from the beginning. The premise from the get-go is very straightforward: girl alone on a sprawling rural college campus. What could go wrong?

The film establishes its villains from the beginning in an internet montage which features video and cryptic text from secret message forums, implicating some sort of new age cult committing ritual killings across the country which are then posted on the internet. While this is admittedly disturbing, I honestly found some of the most interesting the scenes to be within the following exposition of the film, in which Justine finds herself at her own wits, entertaining herself and wandering around the empty college campus. The director, Oliver Blackburn, has a stylish way of illustrating her solitude, and there is something relatable and quietly eerie in this first thirty or so minutes of the film; in spite of the fact that nothing ostensibly scary is happening on screen, there is a very ominous and unnerving mood that gets established; this is what really absorbed me most and got me invested.

By the time Justine leaves the campus late in the evening to run to the local convenience store, the audience knows intuitively that her languid Thanksgiving is about to take a wild turn for the absolute worst, and the suspense of it is taut and subtle up to that point. Unfortunately, from there the film begins to temporarily devolve. For having such an understated and ominous exposition, the film is too quick to take the route of a hyperactive thriller, and spends a good thirty minutes devoting itself to flashy cat-and-mouse chase scenes. While some of these are inarguably effective, it is routine and gets old fast. It is not until the last twenty minutes that the film redeems this devolution with an entertaining (albeit also routine) retribution. While all of this is nicely shot and at times startling, I kept thinking to myself how much I missed the subtlety that pervaded the beginning, and in reflection, that was honestly when I was most unnerved.

The acting here is surprisingly above standard, with Haley Bennett as the competent lead. Ashley Greene plays the counterpoint female cultist, with Mathew St. Patrick as the likable security guard and James Ransone making an unexpected minor appearance. The production values are high and I'm honestly surprised this film wound up slipping under the radar as it did. Granted, it's not entirely original (comparisons to "The Strangers" and "Them" are almost unavoidable), but it is a technically well-made film and is far more interesting than any horror film to hit theaters this past fall.

Overall, "Kristy" is a solid film. I especially commend it for building such a stylish and taut exposition—I honestly can say that the first thirty minutes of the film were among the most inexplicably unnerving I've seen in a long time; quietly creepy even though nothing creepy is happening. As I pointed out, the film does take the cat-and-mouse action a bit too far in my opinion and perhaps is too fast to launch into it, but the final act is satisfying and I was able to overlook this because I found the first act so absorbing and enigmatically spooky. 7/10.

Kristy got only a few elements of horror and is in my opinion rather a movie of the thriller genre. A young woman is hunted by a bunch of wild gooses on a campus while (almost) everybody else is gone because of Thanksgiving break. Production and acting are solid and so is the story and movie. Kristy: worth a watch - if you like the genre or the theme of crazies hunting someone. If not, don't bother watching.

PROS: A good part about the movie was the idea as a whole. The way the scenes were set up allowed for a great amount of fear and horror. The script also allowed for the main character to be resilient, not just for the sake of the movie, but just in general. There was nothing that happened that couldn't actually happen. Although this made the movie very readable, it didn't take away from the fear that it naturally would instill. A movie with a strong, independent, female lead will always be a fun watch!

CONS: The most aggravating part of the movie was the ending. There was so much more that could have been developed, but it just got cut short. I got quite frustrated at this fact because the movie lacked a lot of substance during the actual process, therefore I relayed heavily on the ending to give me that extra umph to propel the film. Another part that could have been improved was the acting. For some reason all the actors felt very stagnant. The main female character had pretty much two factions to her acting, 1. CONFUSION, and 2. BADA** MODE. Which are two good characteristics, but not the only things you need to be the star of a film. The final things that got me really angry was the fact that the main villains always found a way to find the main girl. It is an entire freaking college, and somehow they always found a way to find the girl. This gave the film a rather unbelievable factor.

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We enjoyed watching it. It's a slasher, some creepy vibes. Little bit like the strangers except on a college campus. Overall good! A good scare and fun time.