If ever you need to introduce someone to the core concept of what a ‘Slasher Movie’ is, this is the movie for that. ‘Slumber Party Massacre’ neither rises above slasher movies of this time, nor does it fall below the base standard. What you have here, quite simply, is a VERY brief film about some girls holding a slumber party that recieves an unexpected visitor in the form of a crazy driller killer, that manages to gather together every single trope of the slasher genre at this point in time and present it in a single movie thats *of* quality.

The scripts probably this things weakest element honestly, the basic plot itself isnt too bad, but clocking in at 76 minutes, this things pacing and act structuring is horrendous. The first act throws about 10 characters at us, info dumps relentlessly and when it isnt telling in detail about or characters its showing boobs and thats about it.

The second act starts prematurely and bloats the film out, where could be scenes of suspense, a chance to get to know our characters a bit better rather than just being told about them or just…SOMETHING entertaining to help settle an audience in, instead; we get a lot of scenes of the girls pulling pranks on each other and kind of idley chatting while our killer slowly begins to make a bit more of a presence, but not in such a way that causes any kind of suspicion from the main characters. This basically might as well have been 2 seperate movies slammed together for what it’s worth.

This then leads to a rushed and inconsistent 3rd act that has roughly 15-20 minutes to actually get our killer in front of our main characters, do the suspensful ‘who’ll survive’ run through AND find a satisfying end while also trying to keep our characters interesting and relevent…and quite honestly it doesnt manage it for me.

Had they extended the first act to bring the slumber party element in a bit more, cut down on the nudity, brought our characters to the forefront and gave them distinct personalities that would have set things up nicely for a more subdued 2nd act where things start not quite going right, throw in a few curve balls and extend the 3rd act out a bit more to help better shape out the film and you’d have had something genuinely quite solid on your hands.

As it stands it feels like a film that doesnt know how to start, didnt know how to hold an audience once it DID find its footing, and then rushed an ending because it didnt really feel confident in the best way to resolve things. Add in some less than stellar dialogue and a continuity structuring that feels like an afterthought and what you have left is a 74 minute film that feels absolutely right in terms of how long this thing should be, but absolutely awful in terms of how it manages that time window.

However, the film does have its upsides. While the script is an absolute hot mess, it cant be accused of being boring. This things actually quite fun once it gets into the swing of things, and the bizarre choice of signature weapon that our main killer has, I thought was hilariously entertaining.

I recently jumped on Scream Factories 4k remaster of this film and its sequel after the longest time of an old SD heavily compressed version. and I’ve got to say they’ve done a fantastic job in cleaning this film up and it’s really made me appreciate the direction and cine a whole lot more than I previously did.

This film has a nice fairly subtle styalisation about it, all the elements of production seem to working fairly well in lock step, they manage to get the best out of the gore shots and the whole film holds together well and achieves what it’s setting out to do. It’s not breaking new ground. Its probably one of the safest slasher movies i’ve ever seen. but I appreciate the fact that it just does what it’s setting out to do pretty solidly and the end results…while not exactly ‘wow’ worthy, are certainly solid enough to stand up to repeated viewings.

direction of the cast is maybe a tad flatter than i’d like. The cast are all pretty animated and do utilise their location and set space *fairly* well. But it does come across as all a bit samey. I like it when a director will give their cast clear instructions that help define their characters motives and intentions…But here, all the performances just kind of come across as a bit samey, everyones kind of told to just, do the same thing as each other and that lack of variety does create a bit of a bland texture after a while in all honesty.

The cine is pretty rock solid, as mentioned we have a fairly subtle production style wise that looks decent, but isnt trying to do anything particularly outside of the norm for the genre. shots are *largely* decently composed, but do come across as a little rough around the edges at times, which is a bit of a shame. Colour use is kind of kept to a minimum, but Reds and Blues do get a chance to showcase from time to time. To be completely honest, the bottom of the barrel for the slasher genre is so low, im just grateful this thing points the camera in the right direction 90% of the time and that they actually bothered to get enough B-roll to make the sequences hold together solidly. It’s cine here is probably it’s strongest aspect and the thing I enjoyed most about it. But thats not to say I loved it.

As for the performances. Well…despite how much our characters talk about each other, the ACTUAL differences between our core cast are neglegable. What we have here are 10 cookie cutter characters who really dont vary very much at all from each other. In fact, across the runtime theres only two characters who really DO stand out. One is one of the main characters younger sister, who basically has the trope of ‘being underage’ and the other being Michael Villella as our killer for the movie who’s SUPER animate a touch campy and actually feels like a break from the half dozen to a dozen ‘npc’-esq characters we’re stuck with for most of the runtime. hes a lot of fun and easily one of the best reasons to stick with this.

As for the soundtrack? Well…the score itself is kind of subtle and didnt honestly leave a lasting impact. I suppose its better for something to not cause offense to my ears than for it to be bad enough to be noticeable. But honestly; I didnt have any issues with any of the tracks in this thing.

What I DID have issue with though is the audio mixing, vocals in this thing are mixed WAY low down in things meaning I basically had to put subtitles on to make sure I wasnt missing anything in the film, as all the diagetic sounds had been mixed a lot higher than the dialogue track…outside of that I also noticed a few moments where sound cues and audio effects (such as thunder and lightning) were playing out of synch by a good second or two to when they were actually happening on screen, which did take me out of things a little bit.

Despite it’s issues, ‘Slumber Party Massacre’ is still a somewhat entertaining watch. its a very sloppy production that seems like the film got to ‘written on a cocktail napkin’ levels of planning before it was thrust into production. But despite its sloppy scripting, mediocre character development and mixed results on the sound and direction fronts. It does have some stuff going for it.

The kills are reletively solid, and as mentioned, while it may be a bit generic on the slasher tropes. It IS nice to have a film that does feature most of the big stereotypes of the genre and I really do feel like if you were trying to get someone into ‘slashers’ more broadly beyond your ‘Elm Streets’ and ‘Friday the 13ths’ this would probably be a decent little spinner for someone dipping their toe into the genre.

Add in some decent moments in the cine, some reasonable direction, a few good moments in the scripting and Michael Villella’s performance and you have a slasher film that (admittedly) wouldnt be my first go to when planning a movie night, but it is a movie that scratches a particular itch for me, and as such I can absolutely see it being one i revisit in future.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-slumber-party-massacre/