Slash (2003)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Powerful

good back-story, and good acting

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This really could have been a bit more interesting. There was a lot of farm boy humor in the first hour, but not much of anything else. Nick Boraine (The Breed) was really good.It was almost an hour into the movie before it started getting good. But, it never got bloody, except for the harvester.Nick Boraine, Steve Railsback (Rest Stop: Don't Look Back, The Stunt Man) and Zuleikha Robinson (Hidalgo) all did very good jobs, and the music was really good. The only thing that really detracted was the lack of blood. How can you have a slasher movie without it?

The front case of this movie looked really good, since i am a HUGE HORROR fan...so i gave this a movie a look....it turned out to not be that bad...the story was original and understanding....the killer and his/her mask looked awesome....the band wasn't that bad, meaning the music...i'm more of a metal head, but i got that last song they sang stuck in my head....at the end of the movie wen the band is performing on stage....(SPOILERS) The things that kinda bummed me out was a lot of the off screen kills, meaning we didn't get to see any of the goods....i would've appreciated more of the red stuff, but maybe thats just vampire/gore-hound inside of me talking....i mean there was some blood in this movie but not a lot...(some stabbings, and the "Thresher" scene)....But overall i took a ride on this and had a happy, fun IL' time....its not as bad as people are saying....there are tons much worser then this movie....

Rating: 1/2 out of ****Behold, what we have here is quite likely the worst slasher flick of the new millennium (but not the worst horror film, as we can't forget Legion of the Dead). The unimaginatively titled Slash is a new display in complete and total incompetence, and it's about as poorly made as films get.After dispensing with an obligatory black-and-white prologue, the film makes a quick segue to two teenagers (apparently a couple)driving to a party in the middle of nowhere. Showing off its ineptness from the start, the movie gets into its first stalk-and-slash sequence when the couple in the car swerve off the road to avoid hitting a CGI cow! They crash into a cornfield, with the girl seemingly unconscious and the boyfriend seeing this as an opportune moment to feel her up. Turns out she's faking unconsciousness, and is a lot less angry than one would think she ought to be for her boyfriend showing more concern for her boobs than her well-being.Anyway, the boyfriend is quickly dispatched by a masked killer with a scythe, so the chick quickly runs to the nearest house, this whole chase accompanied by annoying pop rock music. She hides in a nearby barn, and proves to have nothing in the way of peripheral vision as she fails to notice the killer being right in front of her! The whole scene caps off with her begging for her life as he very slowly approaches her. For crying out loud, why not just run? And the sad part of it all is that despite how terrible this opening is, it boasts the only nice thing I can say about the movie; the chick being chased is pretty hot.The rest of the movie focuses on a rock band, whose lead singer is called to the very same farm in the opening scene because his aunt's passed away. He hasn't seen his father (Steve Railsback) in fifteen years, so one can expect their reunion to be a little awkward. The rest of the band (one of whom brings his groupie, who's a tarot card reader, no less!) also tags along, doing little things like playing trivia games over how famous singers passed away to entertain themselves. No points for guessing the band will likely serve as fodder for the scythe-wielding killer.The cast that composes the band is likely the most obnoxious group of protagonists ever assembled in a slasher. Among the lot of them, there's not a single redeemable factor to be found; they're loud, impatient, disrespectful at every turn (especially the token black guy), and they don't even seem to get along as a group, something you'd think would be vital in a rock band.Director Neal Sundstrom is horribly incompetent in staging and filming scares, suspense, or humor. He gives certain scenes a strange color composition, sometimes desaturating the picture for no discernible reason. Any time the stalk-and-slash scenes look like they might just pay off, all the murders take place off-screen and are even sometimes filmed with annoyingly choppy slow motion. Sundstrom's idea of atmosphere is covering the locations with lots of fog, but all that does is give the impression we're watching a stage play.The movie actually attempts to build some sort of mystery in regards to the identity of the killer by delivering obvious red herrings, but when the killer is later revealed, he's not even unmasked. The climax is moronic, with a few of the survivors deciding to hide themselves in a cellar that was revealed earlier to them to be the killer's hideout. The lead character also formulates a plan involving a prop knife, even though he had no way of knowing the weapon was a prop (to add further insult, the killer himself should have known it was a prop).No question about it, Slash is a terrible movie at every turn. It takes a mildly promising slasher concept-which I hear was utilized to much better effect in Scarecrows-and comes up incredibly short in all aspects. I heard this was a South African production, which does help explain some of the cast trying to cover up their accents, but it only proves that filmmakers overseas take too much inspiration from America's own cheap and awful low-budget slashers.

I own this movie, bought on the basis of my insane love for horrible horror movies. And believe me, this one did not disappoint my original belief. But in the end, it wasn't a total waste of an hour. All in all, I'd say it's a pretty decent movie. Why, you might ask?Sure, the plot is horrible, and is chock-full of hack actors. There's virtually no violence, no SENSE, and angst-ridden performances that would be better delivered by monkeys.So now you're wondering, why did she say it was decent? The only redeeming quality is someone was finally able to bring the song "Old MacDonald" into the new millennium.