Beach Massacre at Kill Devil Hills

I don't do many reviews, but I was compelled on this one as I can't believe this movie. I gave it 2 stars because they finished a movie so that right there gives it a extra star. I am still trying to figure out what this was I just tried to watch. There is no massacre. There is nothing but bad editing and really bad dialogue. Diana Prince naked couldn't even save it as they couldn't even make the cut of her topless seamless. I have never seen so many jump cuts. I think the camera they used is the same one they used as a prop in the movie. You can try to watch this, but there is nothing remotely redeemable in this movie. Again the script is bad. There is actually a edit where the girls are talking but there is music over them. So again there is good bad, but this is just bad bad.

I rented this movie the other night, and I thought I was going to be watching a bloody horror movie. Instead, I got a very well done character movie. Being a woman myself, I found I connected with the characters and the situation that they were in.

This movie takes on some very intense themes about male violence towards women, that you don't see all the time in this genre. Specially with the twists that happen. I found myself thinking what would I do if this happened to me and my friends? Yes there were small things that could have been improved on, but I saw a post on the films fan page that said it was a micro low budget film, so taking that into consideration, I feel like they did a good job.

I would recommend this film, just on the fact that it tried hard to be something that other horror movies aren't.

The "plot" here involves a woman going to a deserted beach house with her girlfriends over the same weekend that her violent ex-husband is getting released from prison. The beach house is very remote, so if something bad were to happen...

I see nothing wrong with the plot, though I would wonder why anyone would want to put themselves so out of contact, regardless of whether a violent ex-felon were suddenly looking for them.

The filmmakers here were extremely clever in convincing us that this beach house was remote. What they did was give many shots of the young women driving, and driving, and driving. Throw in some long shots of the beach, with nothing going on, with waves, and more waves, and we see that this place is really quite remote, I mean really far away, from civilization.

During some of the conversations, there were peculiar jump cuts that I could not quite understand. Since we are at the same point of view each time, it was distracting, especially when the cuts were in the middle of a sentence.

The sound sometimes also dropped off, which again made me wonder if it was intentional. It was too frequent to be just bad editing... Or was it? I think also a few people misspoke their lines, getting the phrase correct the second time. Normally, of course, this would be edited out, unless the editors thought that they did such a great job the first time that they decided to leave the whole thing in?

There is a very attractive woman (Diana Prince) who goes topless for about 30 seconds (jump cuts strung together, each 10 seconds long = 30 seconds) You can't miss it, since the lead (Taya Parker) exclaims something like "Look - She's going topless!" right beforehand. Lucky for me, otherwise I would have missed it. By that point, I was not looking. You see, while I watched this "movie," I found myself suddenly fascinated by things in my living room that I had not really appreciated before. The coffee table over the carpet, for example. I was fixating on that more and more as this "movie" played out.

Let me give them some credit, though. There was a surprise ending. Something did happen that was not expected. And a lot of women were quite easy on the eyes.

I think that this movie could have been done a lot better. First and foremost, the editing needed a lot of work.

Beach Massacre at Kill Devil Hill kind of surprised me, but not necessarily in a good way. From the attention grabbing cover of a young woman in a bikini, with a knife, body, and blood, one would think this has all the classic markings of being a B level slasher flick. While it by all means is B level, it is actually less your typical teen slasher flick, and tries to take things in a more story driven direction. Unfortunately, the budget and talent just wasn't here to successfully pull off what they tried to do.

1- The cuts, transitions, and in general the editing is awful, even by B movie standards. Jarring and distracting camera cuts all through the movie, awkward dialogue with possibly some mistakes that weren't edited out correctly, loud music that doesn't cut out at the right time and drowns out the first part of dialogue scenes. Some of this stuff may have been design decisions rather than all being mistakes, but it all came off as distracting and almost unfinished.

2- the acting, while not "good", also wasn't terrible for your average indi film. Some dialogue scenes tended to draw out longer than needed and the writing was hit and miss, but I've seen worse.

3- The story tried to be something more than your typical indi horror slasher, but it just didn't all gel together very well, and came off as long winded. This movie was certainly a slow burner with a majority of the film time spent introducing characters, the plot situation and multiple different threads. While somewhat unique, it just wasn't very interesting, and while there is a twist in how the movie ends, it leaves you more thinking "ok....?" than being surprised or entertained by it.

IMO, anyone looking for some slasher movie fun will likely be disappointed, and people who are wanting a dark story will want something with more quality and meat to it.

Take out all the "artistic" beach shots and the movie would be a much, much, much shorter incoherent mess of bad acting and uncomfortable hot tub scenes..

Then take those cut "artistic" beach shots and put together a live wallpaper for your laptop, and you will have made something decent and worthwhile.