By Tristan Bishop
The Slashening cost $6,000 to make. It’s a horror comedy ‘tribute to Halloween, Black Christmas and Slumber Party Massacre’. It’s distributed by Troma. It’s called The Slashening. The signs aren’t great, really, are they?
I may have said it before, but I don’t enjoy writing damning reviews of low budget films that people have obviously worked hard (and probably for free) on. I respect anyone who manages to complete a feature film, and I’m of the opinion that films (like all people) should be given a chance. That said, the only thing I enjoy less than writing damning reviews of low budget films is watching terrible horror comedies. So you can imagine the quandary in which I find myself.
To be fair, The Slashening had my attention to start with, opening with a sleazy middle-aged couple attempting to seduce a 16-year old pool boy into a threesome, followed by all three of them being killed by an unseen slasher, but this is followed by a scene with two girls singing along to various parodies of popular songs which set the tone for the following 75 minutes: it’s not funny, and it goes on for way too long. I’m referring to the scene explicitly here, but the same criticism can be levelled at the entire film. The plot is basically no different from the films it is paying tribute to – masked killer terrorises house full of girls having a party (or ‘get-together’ as the girls keep correcting people – this is pretty much the standard of the running gags on offer here), so I’m not going to give it too much attention; after all, the film-makers certainly didn’t. What we’re given is basically a parody of the genre, much like the first Scary Movie film, but less witty (I know, right), and without any of the outrageous sight gags that at least made that particular mess worth one viewing.
But I feel at this point in the review that I’m being too negative – I always say that I can enjoy elements of pretty much any film I sit through and so….well, the actors look like normal people. I liked that. Freed from the constraints of the studio system they are unhindered by industry pressure to conform to the ‘TV pretty’ level of attractiveness that you might expect. Sadly that also extends to the performances; although far from the worst I have ever seen, this is strictly amateur-dramatics stuff – which, when you consider the budget of the film, is exactly what this is, so maybe that’s not too much of a nasty criticism after all.
And now – to the bad points. The humour (which this film must ultimately be judged upon) is repetitive and predictable at best, and cringeworthy at worst, with a heavy emphasis on sex jokes and naughty words that won’t impressive anyone over 19 years old that doesn’t live in their mother’s basement and eat cold spaghetti out of the can. Of course, one could argue that particular demographic is where most slasher films are aiming, but this one falls well short of their requirements by an almost total absence of gore and nudity. The lack of the latter is at least addressed in some way by sequences where we ~almost~ see the girls undress, and, later, share a kiss, but these gags just end up underlining what is lacking here. As for the violence, it’s pretty much all off-screen, until the last ten minutes when we finally get a few gloopy sequences, but by this time the hardcore gorehounds will have shrugged and popped their eighties classics back into the DVD player.
In all fairness to The Slashening, it has a harder job than most films by dint of being a comedy – Bad comedies tend to be the worst type of bad films. At least with a bad horror film, or thriller, one can laugh at the shoddiness onscreen, but it’s very hard to laugh AT a film which is trying desperately hard to make you laugh WITH it – it just ends up being embarrassing.
Just to underline the extent of which I enjoyed The Slashening I will leave you with a quote from my review notes. At approximately 65 minutes into the film I have written ‘MY GOD WHY IS THIS NOT OVER YET’. One for the poster quote, Troma?
The Slashening is out now for VOD and download in the US, via Troma.