Slaughter

Slaughter

USA

2009. In English.

Directed by Stewart Hopewell

Starring Lucy Holt, Amy Shiels

Happy New Year, Scarers,

Having seen many horror movies, I’ve had time to recognize my own biases and preferences when it comes to the genre. I’ve previously disclosed my ennui with zombie movies in my review of Splinter (a movie I actually quite enjoyed), and now I will reveal another to you: I am generally underwhelmed by exceedingly gory movies. In life, I generally prefer to be emotionally scarred to being “icked”-out. Additionally, fountains and oceans of blood tend to have a desensitizing effect on the viewer, and I’m here to be scared!

When visual restraint is used skillfully, it is possible for a director to infect a viewer’s mind for weeks or months with spores of fester and ferment. Give anything by Hitchcock or even the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre a look and be astonished by how little gore the directors utilize. The Saw franchise looks vulgar in comparison.

With this in mind, I made the choice to expand my horizons, and selected a movie that seemed particularly gory. Thus, Slaughter.  Coming from one of the After Dark Horrorfest collections, I expected a gory and schlocky B-grade romp, and in that, I was not disappointed.

The movie concerns Faith, who moves to Atlanta to escape an abusive boyfriend. She ends up moving in with Lola, a seemingly sweet girl whose love interests vanish in the night on a surprisingly regular basis. Faith gets suspicious, we the viewers put two and two together, the body count rises, fin. It’s brainless, gory, and just managed to keep my interest enough to finish it, mostly due to the almost believable kinship between the girls.

Slaughter receives a 2/5 on the scare-o-meter (“This isn’t PG?”). It tries, but the plot was just a little too predictable, and the acting just a little too subpar to really succeed in being scary. Gore-wise, I give it a 4/5 (“Ok I actually feel kinda sick.”) because of the improvised dentistry scene. Messing with teeth always freaks me out.

Do I recommend Slaughter? Well, it’d be an okay movie to have on while you order new meat cleavers online, or shop for a fresh goalie mask. The Lola/Faith relationship is almost interesting, but I won’t be giving Slaughter another viewing.

Creepily,

AC