Does
it really make sense to stop for a booty call when you are being stalked by a
psycho killer? Teenage hormones are powerful that way, but they greatly
jeopardize your chances of surviving a horror movie. Nobody understands those
rules better than the fans attending a weekend horror party, but they break
them anyway in Owen Egerton’s Blood Fest (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in Los Angeles.
“Blood
Fest” is sort of like a renaissance fair for horror, but not quite as cheesy.
It is exactly where Dax Conway wants to be, but his talking head psychologist
father won’t allow. For Conway, horror movies were something he shared with his
late mother, but his father blames them for warping the mind of her murderer.
Fortunately (not really), he will gain access through the reluctant help of a
former classmate now pursuing her scream queen dreams.
However,
as soon as the party starts, horror movie huckster Anthony Walsh reveals all
the horrors are real and he is filming everything for his next gore-fest. To
survive, Conway and his friends, hacker doofus Krill and his inexplicably platonic
friend Sam, will have to rely on their knowledge of horror films if they want
to survive the real horrors in store for them.
With
its hip inside-fandom perspective, Blood
Fest should have been much funnier than it is. There are some clever parts
here and there, particularly the gags involving the fan-favorite tree-planting
slasher franchise character, the Arborist. Dubbing the slasher part of the
Blood Fest theme park “Hoddertown” is also a nice touch. However, it suffers in
comparison to the thematically similar Funhouse Massacre, because Blood Fest completely
lacks its manic energy.
It
does not help much either that Robbie Kay’s Dax Conway is such a dull, uncompelling
lead. In contrast, Seychelle Gabriel lights up the screen as Sam, with her mega-watt
screen presence. Jacob Batalon can be painfully cringey as Krill, but he also
lands some of the film’s best lines. Frankly, his explanation of why clowns are
scary might just become definitive. However, the real shortcoming is Egerton
himself, who isn’t sufficiently flamboyant or sinister to carry off a role like
Walsh, regardless of the meta-irony.
Blood Fest sounds like a total
stitch, but it is really just sort of okay, making it a disappointment based on
expectations. Still, you have to give Egerton credit for ending it well,
considering that is where ninety-five percent of horror movies crater. Even so,
it remains stuck in the okay zone. Nothing you can’t wait on for Netflix or
Shudder, Blood Fest opens this Friday
(8/31) in LA, at the Laemmle Music Hall.
