Getting
hacked to pieces in the forest is bad enough. You shouldn’t have to pay for the
dubious privilege. Unfortunately, that is about what happens to the ill-fated
fans participating in the Slasher Sleepout role-playing game. It is all fun and
games until people start losing lives and body parts in Preston DeFrancis’s Ruin Me (trailer here), which screens
during this year’s Macabro in Mexico City.
Alex
has never been a horror fan. She is also a bit high-strung, so it is really
pushing it inviting her to come along on the Slasher Sleepout weekend. Her boyfriend
Nathan ought to understand that, because he was her addiction counselor during rehab.
Nevertheless, he convinces her to join him, because being stalked in the woods
is super fun.
Weirdly,
it is rather enjoyable for Marina and Pitch, a punky fan couple in an awkwardly
open relationship. Naturally, Alex automatically picks up clues the fantasy
game has ominously veered into reality. Yet, her stunningly unintuitive fellow
game players remain steadfastly in denial. So, a good time is sure to be had by
all.
Ruin Me takes off from the
same basic premise as Vincent Masciale’s Fear, Inc., but the execution here is far superior, by a factor of at least one
hundred. Whereas the earlier film drives us bonkers with constant its-just-a-game-no-its-not
reversals, DeFrancis actually builds to a finale with bite. He also
incorporates some funny, attitude-loaded dialogue, but never at the expense of
the core slasher business.
As
Alex, Marcienne Dwyer is pretty believably grounded and turns her big reveals
quite nicely. However, Eva Hamilton steals scene after scene as Marina, the
gothy hot mess. By the same token, John Odom is so flamboyantly obnoxious as
Pitch, half the audience will want to kill him themselves, while the other half
would keep him alive to stir up trouble.
DeFrancis
definitely keeps things moving along at a good clip. Given the premise of the
film, he has license to employ every tired slasher cliché, which he does, but
he finds ways to give them sly twists. Clever and only moderately self-aware, Ruin Me is scrappily entertaining for
horror fans. Already streaming on Shudder in the U.S., it screens this Thursday
(8/23), Saturday (8/25), and next Tuesday (8/28) as part the 2018 Macabro International
Horror Film Festival in Mexico City.
