Opinions concerning this film diverge greatly. If it wasn’t for the development flaws, it could have ended up in a very interesting product. My opinion is rather hazy; I have yet to make up my mind.
The humour is not stable. Sometimes it lasts a very long time before giving us the horror scene we’ve been waiting for. This comedy can easily toss a Police Academy joke at you the moment before turning around to parody a bad habit of horror movies.
What is exclusive but fails in the long run is the passage from present to past, from the story of the survivors to the real events and back to the crime scene investigation that is omnipresent throughout the film. To complicate things further, there are scenes from the amateur movie that are presented to us here and there just as if they were a part of the main development. Then, the director yells “Cut!”, making you slap your forehead. A character dies but the actor playing his role reappears in the next scene. Another one wakes up from a nightmare in which he is killed: you will abandon all hope. The multiple incoherencies and unrealistic situations could have been explained by the fact that the authentic scenes are rare but the conclusion will indicate the opposite.
Thankfully, the film has its qualities. It is interesting by how it combines clichés and the unconventional. Its murders are out of the ordinary and the film becomes very amusing when it falls into ridicule. Furthermore, it seems to be an inspiration for Scream and possibly a few other slasher movies. It is definitively not a film to miss because it steps out of the pack and it summarizes something like ten years of slasher movies.
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