The concept of adding critical blurbs to a movie poster, or DVD case is fascinating to me. PR people are able to take heated, loathing and scathing reviews, pluck out one or two words (out of context) and make the worst movie sound like the greatest thing to ever hit the cinemas.
It was with this thought in my mind that I came to Slaughter Night, a movie so glorious that the only blurb they could find for it's DVD cover is "A Whole Lot of Gore." That's it. Nothing about how amazing the director is, or how the story is new, fresh, and superdelic.
Gore. A whole lot of gore. I knew I was in for a treat then.
Hoping that maybe it was mainstream cinema that was finding this little Dutch slasher film a touch too nasty, I went to IMBD in search of fan-boy reviews. The summaries there were a little better. No one was raving about it, but the opinion was that the slashing was good and the story above par.
I should have listened to the cover.
Slaughter Night starts out with a bang. We're treated to a flashback where some unseen psycho-killer has several kids trapped in an old house. Outside we see what must be police officers sneaking up to the house to save the day. But the killer continues on and before the kids can be rescued he slices off their heads and puts them on pikes. Save
but one. Not exactly something to watch with mom, but a pretty exciting way to start a horror flick.
Flash forward and we find Kristel arguing with her father about dropping out of school to travel the world. Father figures she's a smart kid and ought to stick it out, but before we can conclude the argument we're treated to a pretty harrowing accident that made me think this was one of those new, terrible car commercials.
Kristel and her gang travel to Belgium to pick up a few of her fathers things. Seems he was working on a book that involved a local mining operation. He was especially interested in Andries Martiens, the killer from the beginning of the flick. You see back in olden times, psycho-killers were given the opportunity to free themselves by taking on insanely dangerous missions underground. They were to detect explosive gasses in the mines, ignite them, and if they survived the explosion they were free to go. Apparently Martiens was given such a deal, and it ended poorly. Dead underground, he now supposedly haunts the abandoned mines. At least this is what the mine tour guides like to say to scare the tourists with.
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Article comments
1 - Aaron Fleming
Yeah, all that cave talk was making me think of The Descent, what a great film that was! Great example of darkness used to good effect.
And what's with this 'SL8N8' business? Haha. Whose idea was that?
2 - Mat Brewster
The Descent was so much better in every way. The SL8N8 comes from the fact that some of the characters use a ouiji board to talk to the dead. The dead are apparently either really lazy or they can't spell for they use all kinds of crazy shortcuts in writing. Or maybe a Ouiji board is like the original, mystical instant messenger.