A
little social distancing would have been healthy for this class of Austrian
teens. However, this is the “before-times” and these kids are young, dumb, and
randy. That is tantamount to a death sentence in slasher films. True to form, a
masked man with a grudge will try to bump them off one-by-one in Dominik Hartl’s
Party Hard, Die Young, which releases today on DVD and streams
exclusively on Shudder.
Julia
and her friends intended to party their spring break away at an EDM festival underway
on a picturesque Croatia isle. Of course, the techno will come in handy muffling
their screams. The island setting is also convenient, since the ferry to the
mainland leaves almost never. When Julia’s bestie Jessica storms off after a
fight, she makes herself easy pickings as the first victim. The guilt-wracked
Julia is convinced something bad happened to her, but the rest of her class and
the worse-than-useless cops don’t want to hear it. Unfortunately, as the bodies
of Julia’s classmates start to pile up, everyone has to admit there is probably
a killer on the loose.
Even
by the standard of slasher movie teens, Julia and her friends are glacially
slow to figure out who is out to get them and why. Frankly, once they do, our
sympathies shift to the Smiley Face slasher. That is a problem, because the
killer really isn’t very interesting, but his victims are just completely appalling
characters. That includes Julia too. She is the only potential victim that gets
fleshed out to any extent, but Elisabeth Wabitsch’s portrayal is still pretty
colorless.
Hartl
uses the hedonistic island setting quite effectively and Thomas W. Kiennast’s
frequently disorienting cinematography well suits the pulsing music. However,
the story itself is pretty standard issue. Sure, it is meant as an homage to 80’s
teen-rippers and And Then There Were None rip-offs, but all the teens
are basically cardboard cut-outs.
There
are not a lot of surprises in Party Hard, but Hartl’s closing shot is
darkly effective. For fans who are jonesing for a dead teenager slasher, it
certainly fits the bill. For more discerning horror aficionados, it just isn’t
special enough. Not recommended for the latter, Party Hard, Die Young is
now available on DVD and Shudder.
