New Year's Evil:
Directed by Emmett Alston and written by Leonard Neubauer and Emmett Alston
Welcome to 2019. Twenty years from 1999. Fight Club is now a 20 year old movie along with American Beauty. What better way to ring in the new year than an 80s slasher movie themed after the holiday! I'm thinking a masked killer stalking a new year's eve party and offing them one by one. Nope. It's not that movie at all. It tries something else entirely. It shows you the killer right from the get go. The killer is the main character. It felt like a comedy where this killer was going through a wacky night trying to achieve his goal and having obstacles thrown in his way the entire time. It's Adventures in Babysitting or the Hangover but with a serial killer at the center. It's insane.
What's even more insane than that is the fact that this movie was made and released the same year as Friday the 13th. There wasn't a whole bunch of slasher films at this time. I think the formula might not have been established at this time. This could be the reason it deviates and tries this bat crazy insane movie idea. They sure weren't trying to make it scary. There was no suspense. There were no surprises. It doesn't even try to go in that direction. I'm not even sure it knows how much of a comedy it actually is.
It could go for the gore factor but it doesn't. The aftermaths of the kills are theatrical and shocking in a silly sense. I'm not sure it's trying for those clever kills either. It also has no clue what punk rock is. It dresses extras up how you imagine punk rockers should look like. It then plays the goofiest 80s music it can find to have them having a seizure on the dance floor. It's like a cartoon slasher. He plays around with an elevator using a screwdriver. It's all over the place.
This is a fascinating film in its own right. It fails miserably as a horror movie. It fails as a comedy which I'm not sure its intent was. I have no idea what they were thinking but damn it's so bizarre. I have to recommend it on that alone. I give it a C.
Welcome to 2019. Twenty years from 1999. Fight Club is now a 20 year old movie along with American Beauty. What better way to ring in the new year than an 80s slasher movie themed after the holiday! I'm thinking a masked killer stalking a new year's eve party and offing them one by one. Nope. It's not that movie at all. It tries something else entirely. It shows you the killer right from the get go. The killer is the main character. It felt like a comedy where this killer was going through a wacky night trying to achieve his goal and having obstacles thrown in his way the entire time. It's Adventures in Babysitting or the Hangover but with a serial killer at the center. It's insane.
What's even more insane than that is the fact that this movie was made and released the same year as Friday the 13th. There wasn't a whole bunch of slasher films at this time. I think the formula might not have been established at this time. This could be the reason it deviates and tries this bat crazy insane movie idea. They sure weren't trying to make it scary. There was no suspense. There were no surprises. It doesn't even try to go in that direction. I'm not even sure it knows how much of a comedy it actually is.
It could go for the gore factor but it doesn't. The aftermaths of the kills are theatrical and shocking in a silly sense. I'm not sure it's trying for those clever kills either. It also has no clue what punk rock is. It dresses extras up how you imagine punk rockers should look like. It then plays the goofiest 80s music it can find to have them having a seizure on the dance floor. It's like a cartoon slasher. He plays around with an elevator using a screwdriver. It's all over the place.
This is a fascinating film in its own right. It fails miserably as a horror movie. It fails as a comedy which I'm not sure its intent was. I have no idea what they were thinking but damn it's so bizarre. I have to recommend it on that alone. I give it a C.