Executive producers include jokers Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Hertz, however, unfortunately, the film has nothing else from the fun studio Troma. The director, who is not coincidentally noted in the profession only once, has everything necessary for a template, but amusing slasher: a spacious building resembling a hunting castle; an empty nearby area with a lake; a small group of pupils of the school with an old teacher; several days away from everyone and everything within the fiefdom of the villain. All this was required to take and skillfully play, based on subgenre laws.
For the production of even the most unpretentious slashers, a small talent or at least professional zeal is required, which the author did not possess. Of course, he does not slide into complete creative absurdity, only simply does not understand the features of his tape. Watching is boring. It is caused by a primary mistake with the script, which was issued without any idea. Killing teenagers is simple, like breakfast in the school cafeteria, usually much and does not require where you need to show memorable motley guys, do not lose the entertaining atmosphere in the prologue, give a bright climax with fake self-harm and finish everything with a denouement with a claim to solve a detective mystery. Yes, there are rare representatives of the youth screen meat grinder with the attempt of something pretending to be a masterpiece in its cut, but when the not original template of a long-invented bicycle is used, it is only important to diligently work on it.
Alas, the actors turned out to be faded, whose images differ slightly from each other, and since they are girlish (of course, radically different in real age from the script), then a nudity, well, or some erotic hint, and if still - young and stupid, then it is not a sin to make a grain of humor that adorns dialogue about anything. It could be, but it's not there. There are brief conversations that do not help to distinguish one heroine from another, overcoming the “cardboard” type. It takes about fifty minutes and finally begins a typical rhythmic slasher massacre. The delicacies of the director are unknown, he does not want to stand out among other films of a similar direction, because transient outbreaks of atrocities do not have time to recreate the suspense situation, flashing a couple of moments on the screen with an expressionless cliche, so that after a minute the viewer completely forgets what he was recently shown. When the final credits begin, it will increase significantly, completely erased from memory, where did the whole number of girls go? You popped out of nowhere a cutter or a pitchfork with an instant blackout of the cameraman's frame? Perhaps it was, only this happened in a lot of other slashers, quite bored. And by the way, where did one girl go, I never understood.
There's detective stuffing for dessert. With her, too, there are problems, rooted in ill-conceived plot blunders, when the tape is dissonant between the main part and the apogee. The director undisguisedly demonstrated mysticism, then suddenly struck a prosaic maniac, and then again resorted to the first. Of this, one can only get confused on the ground, apparently, like the author himself, without understanding the nature of the absurdly written evil and moralistic retribution for it.
In the end, we have a very weak representative of the slasher. That it is predictably secondary is not particularly scary, because almost all youth creeps about a group of guys and a maniac are like that. His problem is the lack of resourcefulness when working with genre clichés, when the conflict is sucked out of the finger, the script does not have a decorating irony, the impersonation involved at a low level. But maybe I'm too picky about the average slasher?
4 out of 10