The Slayer - Will's Review

The movie opens with a kill!

Awesome! Straight to the action!  Except... No; No, it was a dream. It turns out that if there's one thing this movie can not be accused of, it's 'cutting straight to the action'


The pacing is terrible - the small cast (four main cast, and I believe only one other person in the entire movie) and isolated location mean that there is a LOT of time to kill. Thankfully the acting was passable, or the length of time we had to spend in the group's company would have been unbearable! That said, one thing I did like about the group is that they were all adults, not teens, which is rare.

The plot (such as it is) revolves around a surrealist painter (Kay) who isn't doing so well in the mental health department, her husband decides to take her for a break, along with her brother and his wife, to a borrowed house on an otherwise uninhabited island, with no means of contacting the outside world.

This variant on the 'isolated cabin' isn't the only thematic horror stalwart on display though; when people do (eventually) start dying, Kay becomes convinced that her dreams are to blame, and makes an effort to stay awake (this is before NOES by the way).

The deaths (5 if you count the one in the opening dream) are all fairly well executed (although one wouldn't work AT ALL as depicted), and the lighting is atmospheric. Really, with a better ending and a few more characters to improve the pacing, this could have been a fairly good movie.

The Slayer (the creature that haunts Kay's dreams) is never actually glimpsed during the killings, and when it is seen, it is only by Kay - it's possible that Kay herself may be directly responsible for the deaths, which would have been a great ending - that the heroin was in-fact the killer but didn't know it!

Unfortunately, that isn't the ending we get.

Some people would argue that what follows (highlight the white strips to read it) is a big spoiler, as it's basically the end of the movie. I however, feel that it is an overused device, and one that should be stated as the tag-line of every movie that uses it, so that I would know not to bother with that movie. (that said, it virtually was the tagline - I read the description on the box and more-or-less guessed how the film would end).

The entire movie was Kay's dream.  

I. Hate. "it was all a dream" endings!!! They are lazy, usually (as here) serve oh to save the writer from coming up with a real ending, and they waste the viewers time; we spent 90mins of our lives watching something that didn't happen (even within the fictional universe of the movie) Pah!

The is a little more to the ending than that - a little extra that I guess is supposed to be some kind of 'twist' - but it doesn't work.

Body Count: 5
Boob Count: 1 pair
Most Memorable Death: Hook Line and stinker.

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