I have been a sucker for the “massacre” genre of movies since… well… forever. When I saw that there was a remake of the original Slumber Party Massacre coming I was kinda excited. When I found out it was a lot less excited, but a lot more curious.
In the early 90s (originally the early 80s) a psychotic man went on a rampage, killing several teens at a slumber party. Murdering them in cold blood with, of all things, a giant power drill. Russ Thorn would forever be known after the fact as “The Diller Killer.” Though he managed to murder several of the teens at the party, one stood against him and knocked him out into the murky depths of the lake at Holly Springs. Assumed dead, because they could never find the body, the case was considered closed and everyone moved on with their lives. Everyone except Trish, that is. Now years later Trish’s daughter is going on a weekend adventure with her friends and Trish could not be more nervous for her daughter’s life and well-being.
Normally when I see that SyFy is making almost any movie I automatically know that it will look and feel a certain way. If they have done literally NOTHING else, they have set a precedent for how the vast majority of their movies are made. Low budget, terrible acting, even worse script, and almost always complete and total rip-offs of existing franchises in order to get “cheap heat.” It’s a cycle that has been circling the drain since the 90s. However having said that, SyFy making a HORROR movie with these expectations brings a slightly different twist to it. Horror movies are already inherently rehashes of existing movie tropes and are known for being mostly if not completely, built on being bad. Somehow SyFy manages to make this one work. It takes what most people know, or assume, about horror movies and not only uses that but also turns a lot of it on its head. Literally.
Horror movie tropes are easy to spot for the most casual of viewers and once you really know what to look for they repeat themselves over and over again. The lone naked friend in the woods being followed by the camera. That scene that is just too quiet for no reason. That weird camera angles that leave just too much room on one side of the screen for it to be natural. What this remake does really well is once the “reveal” happens everything turns around. I don’t want to really ruin what goes on, but I’ll say that it does some “cute” things with the way it handles the rest of the film.
As remakes go, this one is not bad at all. I know there will be people who complain about the changes made, and I know that it is a certain subset of a group that will scream the loudest, but they don’t matter. The one thing that I learned from this is that if SyFy wants to throw money at remakes in this style, I am all for it. There wasn’t much if any CG in the film. The bulk of the effects for the gore and blood were all practical effects. Other than the obvious breaks for commercials this very much could have been a “feature-length” movie. I still prefer the original to this one, but there were enough callbacks and references to the original that it made it feel… I dunno… thoughtful. I guess what I mean is that the director and crew went into this trying to not only update the film but with enough reverence for the originals that it paid its respects. If for whatever reason you find this playing on your TV late at night, you could do a LOT worse than it in the “Massacre” pantheon of films.
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