Pillow Party Massacre

Perhaps the worst ovie of the year.

A bunch of totally unattractive Gez Z'ers get together in a house years after pulling an April Fool's prank on one of the students. Heard it before? Of course you have.

The movie is filled with used up cliches: Jump scares, Truth or Dare games, you name it. Only none of it is effective in this horribly boring movie.

What makes it worse is that the cast cannot act their way out of a proverbially paper bag and they are down right fugly so you don't even want to look at them.

Don't even think about crisp, exciting, directing. Watching paint dry is more exciting.

I bought Pillow Party Massacre on Prime Video.

Along with Jim Wynorski's Murderbot, Calvin Morie McCarthy's Pillow Party Massacre has been a film I have been following the progress of on FB since last year. And have been looking forward to.

This slasher movie does the things. The girls are attractive and scantily clad. The kills are gory and interesting. And there's a mystery about who the killer is, that is held back until the end. And that reveal works.

There's a musical reference to a band that I was obsessed with for a bit in the 80s but haven't heard anyone mention since the 90s, if then.

This movie really works for me.

Within seconds, and I do mean seconds, I absolutely fell in love with Pillow Party Massacre. The neon titles; the retro music; the use of slow motion; it's all there as our cast is assembled at a High School dance in which an April Fool's Day prank goes wild. The music stops only momentarily as the girls gathered get their drink on and then - BOOM! - the party is momentarily abandoned to go make out in a mausoleum of dirty socks.

Pillow Party Massacre, directed by indie filmmaker Calvin, is a delightful homage to the 1980s slasher genre with a modern twist. It successfully marries nostalgia with contemporary storytelling, offering a thrilling and hilarious ride that keeps you hooked from start to finish.

The film kicks off with an unmistakable '80s vibe, evident from the very first frame. The neon titles, synth-heavy soundtrack, and an array of vintage fashion choices transport you back in time.

Get your pillows ready and Parrrrrtaaay!

But this is some of the most garbage ive seen on the horrorfront this year, its absolutely horrendous and etched a sketch amateur slasher flasher with poor sound quality, a filmatographical mess of ''lets make a movie, i just got the new iphone'' kinda camerahandling, the playbook has been made insitu, and the lack of any sort of script burns through at any moment.

The idea to make a horrorslasher is lingering in there, and with a bit more comprehensive insight on the baseline of featurefilm filmaking it couldve been maybe a should see film, but this was lower than trash, even the gory scenes screams for more, and the dumb descisionmaking that drives this genre is taken to the absolute peak of the limit.

Goodlooking actresses doesnt make them good on the act, and when the dire sets in its just so generic and forthcoming. Its not even laughable stuff this movie shows, its a total blunder of darkfiltering homemoviemaking. The grumpy old man says its a no see.

The best thing I could say about Pillow Party Massacre is that the director did in fact pull off making a feature length film which is no easy feat.

There is sincerity and passion behind this project, and two or three of the kills are creative and use some decent makeup effects. This is definitely a step in the right direction for the creator and hopefully a learning experience which will lead to bigger and better projects down the line. But all that being said, I cannot recommend this film as entertainment value on any level.

Despite its tongue-in-cheek title, Pillow Party Massacre never becomes the silly 80's-inspired romp that it keeps on promising to be.

The script is thinner than most direct-to-video horror films would allow their own script to be. Every line of dialogue in this film is soulless exposition, and none of the characters have any personality or identity. By the end of the film I couldn't remember a single character's name, and the few moments where the screenplay tries to be meta are lazy and uncommitted. You can tell that the filmmakers have intended to make their own version of Scream without the wit, knowhow or brilliance that made that film work. And the resulting project is soulless, boring and so glacially paced that the short running time felt phenomenally longer than it actually was.

The film is also riddled with technical flaws. The CGI looks unbelievably cheap and not in an ironic way, and the majority of the kills look incredibly fake without it even being humourous. There are way too many dance sequences in the film which drag on for way too long with the intro scene being the most notable example, and the camera seems to linger on the feet and legs of the characters for an uncomfortably long amount of time as if the director of photography has some kind of strange fetish. The colour grading is terribly off, the sound editing is consistently weak, there are numerous lines of dialogue that are obviously dubbed or sometimes layered multiple times out of order, and the cinematography seems to be using a camera that operates on a steadycam gimble yet also manages to shake all the time. Why you would shake the camera whilst also trying to steady it goes completely beyond me, it's like ordering a diet coke with a side of sugar.

Ultimately, the film is just boring. It was made with the best intentions but without proper expertise or a screenplay worth filming. I didn't laugh, I wasn't scared, I wasn't entertained. This film is no massacre, it's a drag.