I watched the first 30-35 minutes of this maybe a year ago (in pieces) while someone else was watching it. I figured I should watch it all the way through, even given my reservations. My reservations were a few:

• I didn’t go to a school like this. I guess there were one or two girls as attractive as Amber Heard, but did the boys really behave this way around her? Maybe, but I don’t think so.
• Not being cool, I didn’t go to parties or go to weekends away, but was everyone this sex obsessed? I mean, it wasn’t even this bad at my university. (What I mean is the nakedness of the sexual ambition, not necessarily the obsession with sex. Were people this obvious and this ‘cut to the chase’ in your experience?)
• And I know teenage boys are assholes, but these teenage boys are the worst. It would be nice if they all… oh wait.

Before I get to that, it’s kind of bonkers that this film received a theatrical release something like 7 years after it premiered.

(SPOILERS)

But anyway…

Though this is a serious attempt at reviving classic slashers, there’s so much of it the rubs me the wrong way. Like, when Garth sees the girl’s boobs – if I were Garth I’d be getting the hell out of there. I know the actress was 24, but as an adult man, the last thing you want to do is be near teenage girls who’re taking their clothes off. But anyway…

Then there’s the stupid bathroom near-lesbian stuff, which is the kind of thing only man would write. But anyway…

Be careful with that knife, you’ll cut your eyes out. Ahem. There’s never any character development for killers, you know? And revealing a killer well before the half way mark is kind of stupid. It’s a rule that I think the vast majority of horror movies don’t follow. Even when they do follow it, sometimes they still screw it up, but in a movie like this, it’s pretty frustrating because there’s nothing else to hold our interest after the killer is revealed, beyond “how will everyone die?”

And the next day, it becomes an altogether different kind of movie, not a slasher-style film, but almost… well, I can see the comparison to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even if I don’t agree with it. But all the bodies are conveniently located so that the fleeing victims stumble upon them, as if he would have known. There are moments where they attempt to inject comedy, but that feels remarkably odd given the otherwise dour tone once the next day begins.

And even when the big twist comes, we still don’t really get any character development, but at least Emmett gets to first (second?) base before he dies.
But anyway…

Yay, torture porn.

4/10