This slasher reimagining is about as bad as a late 90’s slasher can be. It has a high concept, and an attractive cast but is neither dumb enough to match the slasher heights of the 80’s nor is it intelligent enough to match the revisionist heights of the Scream franchise.

The film focuses on a series of murders on the campus of a New England university. The murders are replicating well known urban legends. Each new murder seems to be linked to a popular urban legend. When the murders start to center around Natalie, played by Alicia Witt, she teams up with journalism student Paul, played by Jared Leto, to uncover the truth behind these grisly murders. 

This film is a high concept slasher which can sometimes work as in the case of Nightmare on Elm Street, he kills you in your dreams. However the best slashers are not as gimmicky. Halloween is just about a crazy guy who kills babysitters on Halloween night. Friday the 13th is about a guy killing camp councillors. Keep it simple. I prefer to keep it simple and don’t get too wrapped up in the concept. 

This is also an example of late 90’s slickness. Everything feels a little too stylish for it’s own good. Nothing quite feels real or lived in. The college campus consists of a handful of buildings that feel like facades not an actual campus. The lecture hall looks like an overly designed set. Every person in this movie is beautiful beyond belief and manicured within an inch of their lives. They all look like they’re just coming from shooting a shampoo commercial or going to a runway fashion shoot. 

If you can get past the artifice and the gimmicky premise there actually are a few things to like here. One thing I enjoyed was the look of the movie itself. It was shot very well. The lighting and camera work is better than most of what we get today. I love the way colors were rendered on film back in the 90’s. The lighting and camera work were all done intentionally by skilled professionals. Even a junk movie like this got the time and attention to look good. Unlike the junk we get today. 

I enjoyed that this film is really an update on the Italian Giallo films of the 60’s and 70’s. This was a subgenera that involved masked killers stalking various victims and the heroes trying to uncover their identity before they could kill again. It combined crime and mystery with horror and truly is the origin of the slasher film. This movie follows that template and pays respect to those predecessors. It is clear that the filmmakers knew their movie history and knew what to emulate. The mystery definitely worked for me. I figured the killers identity before the big reveal, but not to much ahead of the movie. Sometimes you can tell immediately who the killer is and this time I didn’t. I like that. 

Is the movie scary? No. Do the kills work? Some better than others. There’s a murder in a dorm room that is genuinely disturbing. Natalie enters her dorm room. The lights are off and her roommate is moving and moaning. Natalie assumes that her roommate is engaged in some extracurricular activities with her boyfriend. He puts her headphones on and goes to bed never turning the lights on. When she wakes she discovers her roommate was being murdered right next to her. This is disturbing and nasty and done to great effect. The second kill that works really well is the principal. I won’t get into too much detail, but achilles tendons should never be treated the way they are in this movie. 

Aside from these two moments the kills feel generic. In fact most of the movie feels a little generic. Like a royalty free version of a song. It feels like Scream lite. They’re self aware characters but not clever characters. They’re knowing but not smart. The movie is aware, but it’s not self aware. And that’s the problem. 

That said, I knew what I was getting into. I wanted to watch a slick over produced movie that would be easy to look at and wouldn’t challenge me or delay my sleep in any way. If that sounds like you, then this movie might be the way to go. 

Not really my cup of tea. C+