October is finally here! There are tons of reasons why October is my favorite month, but the most obvious is Halloween!!! Because Halloween is the best holiday of the year, I’m dedicating my posts each week to spooky movies! This week I’m writing about the new slasher film that just came out: Hell Fest? How was it? Eh let’s just say there’s some good, there’s some bad, and then there’s some downright ugly.
*****OBVIOUS SPOILERS FOR HELL FEST AHEAD*****
The Good
Hell Fest Itself
The absolute highlight of the film is the actual festival itself. Hell Fest looks like it would be a total blast of a park to go to… minus the fact that people get murdered whenever they get there. The setting allows for some really cool scare set ups. The scares may not really land (more on that later) but the different haunted houses were a lot of fun.
The Film’s Premise
Hell Fest is about a group of teens that go out to the festival for a night of frightful fun. After making it through their first haunted house, the main character Natalie notices that one of the “actors” has been stalking them all night. All of her friends insist that it’s part of the show, but soon they start disappearing one by one as the night goes on. Natalie and her friend Brooke try to tell security but they say they can’t arrest someone that’s “doing their job.” The one big plot point I thought of going into the movie was “If they start dying one by one, why don’t they just leave?” The film’s script actually answers that question in a way that’s both logical and believable. The premise of the film is what pulled me in to see it. How is the execution though? Well…
The Bad
It’s Just Not Scary
There isn’t a single part of the movie where I was on edge. There are some jump scares, but you can see them coming from a mile away. A majority of the scares in Hell Fest come from the characters walking through haunted houses which, as fun as they are, rely entirely on cheap jump scares. You won’t get scared but watching them go through the festival will make you want to go to a haunted house yourself. It was reminiscent of this year’s disasterpiece “The 15:17 to Paris” where half the film was literally just watching the characters on vacation. Except haunted houses are more fun to watch than watching three guys eat ice cream in Europe.
Forgettable Characters
The characters in Hell Fest are extremely one note. They fit all the cliches of the slasher film genre: The main girl is a “goody two shoes,” her best friend and the third girl are the “sluts,” two of the guys are “the jocks” and then there’s “the nerd that likes the goody two shoes” Some movies such as Cabin In The Woods and Scream purposefully have these stereotypes, but they serve a deeper purpose. This one just has these stereotypical horror characters and gives them no background so it’s hard to care when they start dying.
The Ugly
Unoriginal Kills
For a movie with such a cool setting, I was expecting some great kills, but the movie plays it REALLY safe. With the exception to one, every other kill is just the person getting stabbed. Yes, that’s why it’s called a slasher I know, but there could’ve been so much more creativity! Jason stabbed someone through a bunk bed, Freddy Krueger eviscerated Johnny Depp, the killer in this film could’ve done SOMETHING creative to finish off at least ONE victim! The guillotine scene advertised doesn’t go the way you’d think, but that would’ve been something cool to remember the film for. The characters were surrounded by nightmarish things, there were so many possibilities to make the kills unique.
The Ending Is A Weird Mess
At the end of the film, Natalie and Brooke try to tell security about the killer but of course their pleas are ignored. The ladies then try to warn their remaining friends, but one of them volunteered to be a part of a “sacrifice show” (the guillotine scene in the previews). Their friend Taylor survives the guillotine because it’s not a real murder weapon (why the killer thought it was I don’t know). The killer though then chases after Taylor and murders her and her boyfriend in public FOR WHATEVER REASON. The killer is stealthy and smart about his kills for the whole film but suddenly he drops that and decides to blow his cover. He then chases Natalie and Brooke who head for what they THINK is the exit. Turns out it’s not an exit, instead it’s the scariest most advertised haunted house in the whole festival! HOW DO YOU THINK THAT IS THE EXIT? DID THE GIANT SIGN THAT SAID “HELL” NOT GIVE IT AWAY!? The killer enters the house after them and finds the one prop that is an ACTUAL WEAPON. Seriously why would a haunted house have a real axe for a prop? Is that even legal!? Anyways, Brooke is nearly gutted until Natalie arrives and stabs the killer in the gut with the knife he had been using the whole film. The police finally make it into the house but similar to the original Halloween, the killer is nowhere to be found (gasp!). In the final scene though we see the killer return home, completely healed from the knife wound he just got. He goes into a room and we see the other masks and trophies he has from his past kills. He then walks into the living room and we see a little girl sleeping on the couch. His next victim? Nope! The girl wakes up and excitedly yells “Daddy!” and runs to hug him! The killer was just an ordinary with a normal life with no visible motivation for why he kills. Then the credits roll. I get what they were going for: anyone could have a dark side. Your neighbor could be a psycho killer, you never truly know people blah blah blah. The whole ending was just weirdly executed with a lot of inexplicable things happening. I don’t know why it’s so hard for a horror movie to have a good ending, but it’s something I’ve rarely seen over the years. Maybe this month I’ll do a list of my favorite horror movie endings!
It may sound like I hated this movie, but I didn’t. It has a lot of flaws and isn’t scary, but it definitely wasn’t the worst time I had at the movies this year. If you can see it on a discount day, I’d say it’s worth the $5 to check out. Then you’ll want to plan your own haunted house trip!
The Magical World of Dids 