The first thing that strikes me about this film, is that it doesn’t seem so much written as compiled. The screenplay is just a timid lump of slasher film clichés, and the characters are but the shallowest stereotypes of upper-class ninnies. These folk are not treated as actual human beings, more like living, breathing caricatures bearing names such as “Muffy” and “Chaz”.

Now normally it would seem silly to complain about a lack of characterization in a slasher film. But that’s just the point! The film indulges itself with a huge galumphing first act (My having to take a pee break at this point was the movie’s highlight) filled with exposition and character development, blithely unaware that it has neglected to include any characters worth developing! Oddly enough, after displaying an open contempt for its leads, the film then expects the audience to embrace them. (The film possesses a snotty derision for slasher conventions and slasher fans, despite not truly knowing what makes people watch such films in the first place.) The trouble is, these are not genuine human beings, and we don’t care about them. The patter they engage in is gratingly boring , the April Fools tricks they play on one another are constant and annoying. I’m afraid the filmmakers did a fine job in crafting a first impression. No matter how much “character development” is shoveled our way, these folks remain thoroughly unlikable people. We just keep waiting for something to happen, but the abrupt appearance of a spontaneous soccer game is the most jarring thin that occurs for the first half of the film.

You see, my friends, there is no “good stuff” in this picture. Sort of a self-styled parody of the slasher genre, the film thinks itself smarter than its contemporaries. Frankly it doesn’t display any evidence of this. It’s pickled in the typical “Oh aren’t these conventions were beating into the ground, and incidentally, making you pay to watch, lame?“ brand of snarky affected wit. In its own odd way, this film anticipates the dim, useless post ‘Scream’ offal of the late 90’s, much in the same way St. Augustine anticipated the Cartesian revelation that one must exist in order to ponder one’s existence. (See, makers of ‘April Fools Day‘? Just because someone enjoys blood and nipples, doesn’t mean they have to be dumb!) There’s just way too many jumping-cat scare scenes and “fag” jokes for me to show this movie the respect it so piteously demands. For a smart-ass parody, it’s pretty light on the smarts. (How many rattlesnakes are there in Nantucket?! Hell, why end the idiocy there? Why not have wandering vacationers encounter Siberian tigers? Or a giant scorpion for that matter?) Without its apocryphal self-parody to fall back on, the film displays a unique incompetence at being scary, shocking, or even interesting. It puts me in mind of how Mark Roger’s ‘The Dead’ contains a slight against Stephen King‘s ‘It‘. If you’re going to mock someone else‘s work, you’d better damn well have the chops of your own to back it up.

Instead we have goofy nudity-free simulated coitus, dismembered mannequins, rubber heads and other timid goings-on. (We only see vague and unconvincing shots of corpses and such, never the actual killings themselves. And *sigh* yes there is a reason for this, as I’ll get to shortly.) The cast gets clued in to the murders only after someone finds Nan and a couple’ others dead in a well. This drew the following reaction from me; “ *Gasp*! Wait, … who was Nan again? ” I don’t even remember anyone named Nan! I refuse to believe that there was a Nan before she turned up dead in the well! Our poorly differentiated dullards then endeavor to split up in the labyrinthine mansion in order to fight Muffy‘s insane twin sister, Buffy. (See previous paragraph, Re: Purposefully crafted idiocy)

Well, kinda.

Well, now we come to it. No, I won’t ruin the big twist ending for you, except that I already did, by mentioning that there was one. (D’oh!) You now know that there’s a twist ending, and its nature should be obvious from the title.

Oh so very cute. Congratulations to Danilo Bach. You got me to sit through 90 minutes of mind-numbing crap so that you could insult me for watching mind-numbing crap. Just one question. Was there any real point to this little story of yours?

Didn’t think so.