Slashers (2001)

Six contestants compete for a prize of anything between twelve and eighteen million dollars on an American edition of a bizarre Japanese game show. The contestants must attempt to stay alive as they are placed in an arena against three psychotic killers.

This Canadian-made parody of those infamous extreme Japanese game shows is humorous, strangely entertaining and even slightly inventive. Continuing the reality theme that featured in movies such as ‘The Last Broadcast' (1998) and ‘The Blair Witch Project' (1999), ‘Slashers' is presented to the viewer solely through the eyes (or lens) of the cameraman of this weird and warped game show. However, unlike the aforementioned films, ‘Slashers' is not a film that is meant to be taken all that seriously. The movie possesses an inherent comic atmosphere throughout and features a whole array of weird and wonderful characters. The killers consist of a supposedly inbred, chainsaw wielding redneck, a demonic looking priest (both played by Neil Napier) and a more than slightly deranged `doctor' known as Dr. Ripper (Christopher Piggins). The killers are portrayed in the movie as highly theatrical whereas their actions are horrid and brutal reality. These characters all provide at least some degree of humour, one especially when he announces to the terrified (and one very angry) contestants during a commercial break that he is only doing his job.

The contestants are unfortunately less interesting. They range from a terrified law student who wishes to become a political martyr before realising what a big mistake she had made to the somewhat dangerously odd. One very humorous aspect was added in Tony Curtis Blondell in the role of Devon as one has to ask just how many times has he seen Romero's ‘Night of the Living Dead'? Of course, similarities between his character and that of Ben are more than likely down to the writers rather than the actor. The acting performances from the entire cast were all fairly lousy. While some of the performers put far too much energy into their performance and came across as extremely hammy, others seemed to be more than happy just to spout a few lines in order to get a small paycheque. However, despite the generally dreadful performances the movie was still fairly enjoyable and remained watchable from beginning till end. ‘Slashers' was also surprisingly gory (or perhaps `bloody' is more the correct word?) although many of the more advanced effects echoed the obvious low-budget of the movie. It was quite refreshing though that the makers chose to attempt manual effects rather than opting for poor CGI which I have seen a number of recent low-budget movies resort to despite the distinctly poor end result.

‘Slashers' is undoubtedly a vastly cheesy movie with a rather basic storyline and no real scares. Unlike other similar films, ‘Slashers' does not portray any sort of darkly sinister atmosphere that works as an addition to the pseudo-snuff style. Instead, it is quite simply a light-hearted, bizarre and somewhat unique horror comedy. The film is fairly predictable and the plot-twist is not really effective as any viewer who has taken notice of the rules will realise what has happened. In addition, attempts at character development are pretty laughable. Is ‘Slashers' great? No. Is ‘Slashers' good? Well that's a matter of opinion. Many people will probably dislike this but fans of non-serious parody-style horror may find this one to be worth one watch. Despite it's low budget there is an incredible attention to detail in the actual arena and, if not for the poor acting and occasionally lacking special effects, one could actually believe that this were a real game show! In fact, I would venture to say that the makers actually put more thought into this movie than first meets the eye. Horror fans may enjoy spotting the horror villain in a particular scene. With a higher budget it would most likely have been much better. My rating for ‘Slashers' – 6.5/10.