Leslie (Lily-Claire Harvey), Brian (Turner Vaughn) and Moses (Matthew Tichenor) are three friends who work for Hooper Industries and the preparations for the firm’s New Year’s Eve bash are in full swing, despite a general lack of enthusiasm at having to work for the sexist, misogynist dinosaur that is Mr. Dugan (Dave Sheridan). Unbeknown to them, the party is going to be livelier than expected as a serial killer known as The Doctor has upped sticks from his previous kill zone and headed to their home state of Kentucky to continue his kill spree…
Directors P. J. Starks and Eric Huskisson are clearly dyed-in-the-wool horror fans, because their love letter to slasher movies is full to bursting with nods to icons of the genre, whether it’s the bar called Coscarelli’s, characters with very familiar surnames (such as an employee called Harry Warden) or the inclusion of such recognisable figures Sleepaway Camp star Felissa Rose and Scary Movie alumnus Sheridan, plus deeper casting cuts such as Final Destination creator Jeffrey Reddick.
Rose gets to throw herself into the part of the perma-enthusiastic Stephanie, Reddick is actually a bit of a hoot as deadpan, exasperated HR rep Norman Perkins and Sheridan gets to lean into cringe-inducing workplace humour as the boss from Hell and the source of Perkins’ exasperation. The opening act leans into The Office’s style of provoking laughs from viewers while they watch through their fingers; meanwhile, the emphasis on gags which focus on bodily functions and fluids may have some feeling ready for the plague-masked killer to lay into the cast as soon as possible, starting with Dugan. Your wish is New Fear’s Eve’s command.
A lot of people die in this movie. Sometimes in groups. Always in gruesome fashion. The opening sequence, which catches us all up with The Doctor’s previous exploits via a news report, bumps off no fewer than five folks in West Virginia with an accompanying, brisk shot of gore for each. Once it switches to the three main protagonists, there could be a feeling that Starks’ screenplay is going to kick its heels with matey interactions and possible romantic complications but no, there’s just enough time to establish these folks as the guys who are likely to make it to the last few minutes before the kills start up again and rarely stop, save for a subplot involving law enforcement which still manages to include a splattery, Saw-style, multi-victim trap.
It feels as if the creative forces behind this wanted to use as many different implements as possible to cause loss of life and didn’t cross any of them off the whiteboard, so there’s murder by knife, hand drill, axe, cleaver, hand drill, scalpel-loaded crossbow, shears, dildo (yep!), toilet (yep!) and many more besides. Faces are ripped away, throats are ripped out, but nothing feels ripped off despite the constant references, both visual and verbal. The main trio takes time out to namecheck other New Year’s horror movies (Norman J. Warren, your time is now) and there’s even a riff on a joke from Die Hard which is instantly dismissed as being inappropriate for that segment of the holiday season.
New Fear’s Eve’s wafer-thin story may just be a peg on which to hang a series of gory set pieces, but the enthusiasm for the project is infectious, carrying the whole thing through the moments where the performances or the jokes don’t quite hit the mark. It might degenerate into a line ‘em up, hack ‘em down procession of disposable folks who get to show up, maybe say a line or two and then get dispatched in bloody fashion by a psychopath they can’t outrun (or don’t try to), but gorehounds who tuned into such franchises as Friday The 13th or the later Elm Street movies primarily for the body count will find their lust for carnage sated here.
If anyone expected a serious, suspenseful update of costumed executioner tales, I suggest that the title gives more than a hint of this film’s intent and, although blood sprays and guts spill with relentless regularity, the tone is comedic and the violence imaginatively cartoonish. You’ll almost certainly be chuckling rather than chundering and waiting until our featured friendship group finally gets pulled into the mayhem.
New Fear’s Eve is tropey. Of course it’s tropey, that’s the point. Starks and Huskisson know that our final folks can flee from the menace, but anyone lower down the cast list will stand in place to get annihilated. Guest stars are there to burn brightly and briefly. The killer will appear next to the next target without them noticing. The effects are the show and, more often than not, they’re pleasing and practical. The ending teases a potential follow-up, with the final girl having faced off with The Doctor and…
…ah, now this is where New Fear’s Eve diverts from the usual template, because the tale comes to an abrupt halt and the end credits take the place of where I’d expected a final shock or confrontation. This lack of a solid resolution risks the erosion of some of the goodwill built up over the previous eighty-odd minutes, especially for anyone seeking anything approaching a crumb of conclusion, but there’s an audacity to bringing the curtain down at that point and an eye on extending the lore is a feature of so many genre entries, so I can’t be as mad as I probably should be.
Undemanding, genre-literate and fun, New Fear’s Eve may prioritise sanguinary spectacle over substance but hey, are you here for Oscar-level acting? Don’t pretend you are. We’ve all rented this kind of thing for an untaxing watch after coming home from the pub on Friday nights in years past, so why should we get sniffy about a modern spin? Oh, and as for Brian’s surname – good grief, guys.