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Posted By: GOREGRINDwp13 at 10:21am, December 4, 2008
It was pretty good for a low budget film,but the acting was pretty bad.
For some reason, I thought this movie was actually good. Some people would resent that, but I think it was a good movie.
Posted By: Repo!Screams at 12:59am, April 19, 2008
The plot to this movie was amazing but the movie itself was horrid!! I mean it had the plot of a great movie but lacked everything ese!! haha if a big studio like Screen Gems and WB would pick this plot and have a writer rewrite the entire script the movie could be great givin the right director/producer! I think that Wes Craven could make a good take on this film!! The killing scenes were decent so im going to give it one star but ......
Japans number one television show, Slashers, is a live reality show in which contestants are voluntarily placed in a fun house type maze called the Dangerzone populated by 3 homicidal maniacs called Slashers. They are in the maze to ensure that these willing contestants do not live through to the end of the show and instead suffer bloody, violent deaths to the delight of the viewing audience. The survivor(s) of the Dangerzone, if any, will be the lucky recipients of 12 million dollars. The film takes place during Slashers first ever all American edition in which the contestants of are all from, you guessed it, America. To help celebrate this special occasion,and to the delight of the viewers, the producers are populating the Dangerzone with two of the most popular and nastiest Slashers, Chainsaw Charlie and Dr. Ripper. They are also using this occasion to introduce a new Slasher, The Preacherman. Will any of the contestants survive this special episode? You will probably have fallen asleep by time the answer is revealed.
Plagued by a plethora of distribution and financing problems, director Maurice Devereaux was finally able to get his micro-budget horror film out to the public. The idea of reality television continually pushing the envelope until one day they will evolve into people killing each other for entertainment is not a new one. The concept has been explored with films such as Running Man, Series 7 and even video games like Manhunt. In this vein, Maurice Devereaux does an ok job at delivering the tired, ham-fisted message of the possible evils of reality tv and just how far people are willing to go for entertainment as well as how far people will go for money. So does Slashers add to this concept? Not much. In an attempt to make the show seem more like an actual live television show, Maurice Devereaux films Slashers using one video camera in a 'one take' style ala Rope, the premise being you are seeing exactly what the cameraman is seeing as he follows the contestants throughout the maze. Some innovation and originality does peek through at times like in the way commercial breaks are handled. Contestants, as well as the Slashers, must hold their respective positions while waiting for the commercial break to finish. Also, some nifty ideas were thrown in that one could imagine would hold true if a show like this actually existed. For example, to increase the odds of surviving, contestants can reveal aspects of their personal lives,if you are attractive, show some skin or if you want a guaranteed immunity from death until the next commercial break, have sex on camera. Performing actions such as these increase ratings as well as gaining audience sympathy\favor and in turn can increase the probability of the Slashers being more inclined to kill off the contestants NOT favored by the viewing public.
Past, present, or future, the lure of a huge amount of cash is a more believable motive for a person to sign on to a show in which they could be slaughtered for entertainment than the hackneyed motivations that drove these characters to join the show. The contestants in this episode of Slashers are:
Rebecca Galley (Carolina Pla): Three time Miss Steelwoman winner
Megan Lowry (Sarah Joslyn Crowder): Law student
Brenda Thompson (Sofia de Medeiros): Model\actress
Devon White (Tony Curtis Blondell): Ex-marine and boxer
Michael Gibbons (Kieran Keller): Computer programmer
Rick Fisher (Jerry Sprio): Doorman and overall tough guy
Throughout the film, the true motivations for why these individual contestants signed on to participate on Slashers are revealed (no, it wasn't the money) through long, boring conversations that are as about as convincing as the alternative motives they are revealing. It also doesn't help that these long, boring conversations are being acted out by some stunning examples of just how bad acting can get. If there is a lowest rung on the acting ladder, these 'actors' have yet to set a foot upon it. Honorable mention goes to Sarah-Joslyn Crowder for the worse performance EVER in a low-budget film, as well as Sofia de Medeiros for the funniest face made during a serious death scene. These two were not the only offenders, as the rest of the contestants were just as terrible, but they were bad enough to mention specifically. In all fairness, these performances were made a lot worse because of Maurice Devereaux's writing plus his decision to use the single-camera, single-take style and then devoting the majority of the films running time exploring these contestants and their interactions with each other. Having below-amateur actors having to act out scenes that are filmed by one hand-held camera with no cuts is ensuring some uncomfortable scenes rife with bad acting. That's not to say that all the acting in Slashers was bad, as the mask-wearing Slasher characters of Chainsaw Charlie (Neil Napier) and Dr. Ripper (Christopher Piggins) were performed with campy glee and are performed on par, or better, with characters found in your local haunted house during Halloween. But the true diamond in the rough would have to be Claudine Shiraishi who plays the Slasher hostess, Miho Taguchi. During long dialog, hamming it up, or even just facial expressions, Shiraishi is the only actor who comes out unscathed and handles her part like a pro.
The sets and effects in Slashers are of the micro-budget caliber, with no real standouts or surprises. The Dangerzone was actually an indoor paintball range and it looks like one. With horror props that look as if they were purchased at Spencer's Gifts, the Dangerzone of Slashers looks worse than what one may find in a raveling carny fun house. The gore is abundant and features decapitations, impaling, eye gougings, and a chainsaw death complete with disembowelment, yet they are all extremely poor and cheaply executed. Since filming is done from a single camera perspective, the illusion of one-shot takes during gore scenes are achieved by simply having the camera showing violence starting, panning to another contestant observing in horror, then panning back to the violence where a stand in effect has now been placed and an obvious edit made. It is effective in execution but combined with how obvious it is, the fake level of the gore effects, and the fact that we are supposed to take this seriously, makes for some pretty unintentionally, funny moments. It is like watching a group of actors, in a serious film, acting as though they are seeing a flying saucer when in fact it is obviously a paper plate on a string.
The music during the film is surprisingly well-done. Martin Gauthier creates a series of electronic scores for the film with the Slashers theme song being the standout. Consisting of a woman singing in Japanese over a cheesy, yet catchy, techno beat while the DJ states "Super Fine!", it is more enjoyable than the movie itself. Each of the 3 Slashers featured, Chainsaw Charlie, Preacher Man and Dr. Ripper, also have their own, individual theme song that play whenever they are on camera and added a nice touch that echoed the way wrestlers are introduced and touched on the subject that is not explored, of the tendencies of certain factions of the public treating murderers as celebrities.
Slashers does have one thing going for it, however, and that is it's opening. The Slashers intro sequence is done quite well and coupled with the theme song, makes it enjoyable to watch more than once. Maurice Devereaux actually does create a very believable intro to a game show in the not so distant future. In fact, up until the contestants are released into the Dangerzone, Slashers shows hints of what could have been a fun, enjoyable movie had a campy route been taken. If not, some interesting aspects could have been explored such as the fan base of the individual Slashers who cheer them on and hold up signs in the same way horror fans do with other notable horror icons such as Freddy and Jason. This would have been an interesting subject to explore a bit more. Even the motivation of the Slashers themselves are touched on and in one scene show Chainsaw Charlie break out of character during a commercial break and plead with a combative contestant not to kill him because "He's got kids" and "Just doing his job". But instead of expanding on these more interesting subjects, Maurice Devereaux decides to stay focused on the contestants themselves, along with their motives and relationship dynamics. Because of this, Slashers ends up being an overly amateurish movie that ends up being what no movie should ever be, regardless of budget or genre, and that is mind-numbingly boring.
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