Do you want a slasher movie that somehow has a film budget, but an SOV Sensibility? Well; ‘The Last Slumber Party’ is the movie for you! This, somewhat generic, late 80s slasher piece pretty much gives you the absolute barest minimums you need in order to enjoy a slasher pic. But with the added bonus of some surrealist arty horror moments thrown in for good measure!

The plots…Well; the plots about as generic as it gets really, 3 girls are looking to let their hair down by hosting a slumber party at one of the girls parents house. the father of the house happens to also be a doctor working on a psych ward, and wouldnt you believe it! One of their more ‘Out there’ patients has escaped the ward dressed in scrubs and armed with a particularly sharp scalpel! And to confuse things a bit! There are ALSO 3 horny jocks ambling about looking to crash the slumber party for good times and beers, even though the girls are on STRICT instructions to have NO beer and NO BOYS! 

And what follows is about 50 minutes of girls idling around a small mansion in states of undress, while the dudebros randomly break in and out of the house to get fresh and the killer slowly makes his way to the house, picking off a few people along the way. with the remaining 20 or so minutes of the film being the main reason to check this one out. Some pretty decent kills, and artsy dream sequences that just about help pull this film up out of the dregs into something half decent and worth your time. 

Dont be fooled, the script for this really isnt anything special, outside of the dream sequences, this is a heavily padded feature where we spend more time watching the girls dancing in the kitchen and wandering around the house than we get ACTUAL plot setting…maybe with some more atmospheric lighting or even a jumpscare or two things could have been a bit different. But its just a hell of a lot of walking and exposition. intersperced with an ultra low body count on the ‘slasher’ front. 

The dialogue feels drawn out and overcomplicated, presumably again, to help pad the runtime. The characters are all ultra generic stereotypes of the genre…Basically if you’ve ever caught a slasher film, your likely WAY too familiar with these character tropes…and thats kind of dissapointing, because while I know these kinds of characters are a given, its really more what you do with them that makes them work to their full potential, rather than just putting the tropes in the scenario and watching it play out. 

Throw in a somewhat underwhelming ending and an act structuring that just seems to get stuck at one pace for the full runtime, and youve got yourself a horror movie thats solely flying by the tone and vibes its putting out on a script level…and thats about it. 

I will say, this feels a bit like a Horror comedy in places, and when its being more light hearted, it really lands the punches well. But this one kind of reminded me of ‘Nightmare Sisters’…But not as sharp or well constructed…and I didnt like ‘Nightmare Sisters’…So when im saying your the poor man to that…thats not great.

On every other front, its the bare minimum…the directions flat, predictable and kind of lifeless, barring the arty moments where it does get a *bit* of a bump in quality…But not enough to really fully win me over. Cast directions fairly flat and lifeless too, this is the kind of movie where you can tell the cast and film makers were excited to say ‘Fuck’ on screen, because the cast deliver their ‘F-bombs’ with a pointedness that can only come from someone being a bit *Too* excited to swear on screen…their physical presences are limited purely to scripted instructions and their dialogue deliveries are largely D.O.A. 

The cine is largely bland, mostly locked off shots in mid or close up. theres no dynamics in the setup for this one, and while I will say its pretty decent on the B-roll, there are moments where they clearly forgot to shoot coverage, because the edit will just flat out hard cut away from some scenes with no transitionary shot creating a very jarring experience. Compositions and lighting are uninspired. theres maybe a half dozen half decent shots in this thing…But otherwise its very utilitatrian in its approach, which felt a bit clinical to me…Not helped at all by the fact that the killer for the film isnt really particularly engaging or interesting to shoot, its a guy in a surgical mask…they never reveal what he looks like under it, and given large chunks of the film take place in the hospital, it just kind of all blurs together. 

Performances, as mentioned are flat, even the kills lack any kind of siginificant animation or ‘Depth’ to them…people just die in this film and noone really gives it any kind of attention. they just move on, theres no mourning, no sense that we should even really care these characters are gone, and that combined with the fact that the characters themselves just arnt given that much depth or characterization, leaves the whole thing feeling quite underwhelming.

Oh! and the soundtracks kind of D.O.A as well, a handful of tracks largely at the beginning and end of the film. and very little in the way of incidental music. Most of the film plays out to dead air or ‘on set’ audio…its quite dissapointing. 

‘The Last Slumber Party’ has its moments, and it doesnt really do anything so horrendously that I could call it ‘Bad’ inherently…but it didnt do anything to really wow me or win me over either. It’s a true neutral. Definitely not main feature fodder, but it could play well as an appitizer, or the middle part of a triple feature bill…clocking in at just over 70 minutes. if your looking for a slasher and your in a hurry, this’ll give you everything you need in compressed form…but not everything you want…nor everything at a breathable pace.

Source – https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-last-slumber-party/