Brett Garten, Movie Extraordinare

7.5

My favorite and least favorite part is how meta this hour and a half sometimes became.

This remake is everything I wanted in the remake of the phallic weapon-wielding psycho killer of the 80s favorite target of cinematic slayers – teenage girls at a slumber party.

There are just enough tongue-in-cheek references to the original 2, including the ridiculous guitar from the sequel and the feather-filled half-naked pillow fight (the gents this time). A nice balance of self-awareness and horror movie blissful ignorance in our main cast. This was one of the more lightweight and fun remakes of the year. I went in expecting ridiculousness and a few chuckles, and this delivered that and more! I feel this achieved what one of my most loathed horror remakes, “Black Christmas”(2019), was attempting to. This pointed out the stereotypes of the original, played into the “there’s a reason these don’t age well culturally,” but didn’t turn into a preachy nag fest that forgot it’s a slasher film and is also supposed to entertain the audience while enlightening them in the process. Chef’s kiss. Solid work, *checks notes* SyFy network…

6.2

This one had such promise… That it ultimately pisses away by the time the credits roll.

An interesting premise, based on a Native American tale of a soul-thieving deer creature roaming the forest and punishing those taking from the earth and not doing their part to care for the world around them. But nope, we have to spend time with the family drama of the adults. Adults that are so dumb that they can’t figure out until their third trip to the house that that’s a car under that tarp that just appeared there since yesterday. Better yet, it’s the car of the principal who went missing. And who woulda thunk it? She should have listened to the creepy little kid and not gone in the attic. The lesson of the whole thing – if there are multiple deadbolt locks and one or more blessed artifacts guarding a door… don’t open that door. Bonus points – if you see a freshly dead body, don’t go stand over it. Something bad happened there to cause said dead body. Don’t tempt fate.

An interesting film that unfortunately fell flat in the end, in my book.