The Slaughter – DVD Review

The Slaughter is one disjointed movie. In the course of its 96 minutes, it goes from really cheesy to creepy to standard B slasher to above average slasher to parody. The odd thing is, it does some of those really well; they just don’t fit together as a complete film.

The movie opens with some great unintentional hilarity in the form of a summoning ritual. Said ritual entails a bunch of topless woman chanting before something goes awry and chaos breaks out. After watching this opening scene, I was expecting a movie filled with cheese and unintentional laughs galore.

The movie skips ahead fifty years in the time line and the mood totally changes. I don’t want to delve into specifics and spoil The Slaughter‘s most effective moment but this brief segment of the film is very effective and creepy as hell.

After that great scene the movie jumps ahead another fifty years to introduce the main cast and once again the mood is totally different. A group of college students has been hired to spruce up an abandoned house and prepare it for sale (the same house that featured in the previous scene). It quickly becomes clear that pretty much every character is a slasher cliché. All the classics are here: final girl, the stoner, the prick, the slutty girl, and even the greedy capitalist. After getting introduced to these cookie-cutter characters I finally thought I knew what I was going to get; a by-the-numbers slasher film.

However, a by-the-numbers slasher film is not what follows. The movie actually builds up the tension slowly. Instead of people dropping like flies the first time someone heads off on to their own, there’s a gradual build to the monster’s first actual appearance. It’s pretty rare for a horror movie to actually take the time to do that these days. The characters are still an assortment of clichés but the movie still works well.

Of course, after spending most of the first two-thirds of the movie building tension, the movie suddenly becomes a comedy. The kills start happening, and the survivors are trying to escape from a wave of zombies and all of the sudden it is a comedy. The movie’s final twenty minutes or so are actually really funny, it’s just kind of jarring to go from a relatively serious movie to a completely silly one.

If you don’t look at The Slaughter as a whole, its forays into various genres work. The movie spends most of its time as either an above average slasher film or a very amusing comedic slasher film; it does a good job with both of those. The problem is the two approaches don’t really meld together in any way. While the story hangs together fairly well, the sudden shifts in tone make the movie feel like it is actually several separate movies that just happen to be using the same plot and cast.

It is also an unmistakably low-budget affair. The acting is a mixed bag, there are some choppy edits and the special effects are often less than special. It’s a B horror movie though so those things are largely expected and easily overlooked.

I really liked The Slaughter. The film has some genuinely creepy moments and great comedy bits. It’s unfortunate that the people making the movie couldn’t decide on one of the two vibes because both have great potential. The clash in moods is pretty much solely responsible for its low review score. If you’re a fan of horror and comedy horror, you will enjoy The Slaughter.

The video is presented at 1.78:1. The video quality isn’t terrible, but it looks grainy at times. The audio is in Dolby Digital 5.1 and, while unspectacular, is perfectly functional.

Deleted Scene – An extended version of the attic planning scene. While there’s some amusing stuff here, it’s a pretty long scene just as the action is ramping up so it’s understandable why it was trimmed down.

Outtakes – This is about five minutes of the standard line screw-ups and actors goofing around. I’m not usually a huge fan of outtakes but these were pretty amusing.

Trailers – In addition to a trailer for The Slaughter, there are trailers for HP Lovecraft’s The Tomb, Acts of Death, Holla, Hard Rock, and Curse of Alcatraz.

I would have loved to see a commentary on this movie, if only to know what the rationale was for the abrupt changes in mood (assuming there was a rationale). The extras we do get aren’t bad, there just aren’t a lot of them.

The Slaughter melds an effective horror movie, a highly amusing comedy/horror plus bits of a hokey B-movie into a single entity. That melding process doesn’t feel natural however and this hurts the movie’s review score. It is still a fun movie though; if you’re a fan of both genres, this one is recommended.

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Lion’s Gate presents The Slaughter. Directed by Jay Lee. Starring Billy Beck, Brad Milne, Zac Kilberg, Jessica Ellis and Terry Erioski. Written by Jay Lee. Running time: 96 minutes. Rated R. Released on DVD: Nov 06, 2007. Available at Amazon.com.