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STUDIO: Phase 4 Films
MSRP: $19.99
RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Featurette
Trailer
The Pitch
A hockey team gets a reality show. Murder happens.
The Humans
Jason London, Cyia Batten, Kaley Cuoco, Nestor Carbonell and JC Chasez
The Nutshell
Jake has just been sent to North Dakota to cover the exploits of a local hockey team. There’s a potential story there and he wants to develop a reality show around this Cinderella team. The guy’s crew hates him and somehow he’s been stuck with a troubled actress. I still don’t get what an actress was doing on a reality show about a hockey team. That’s when people start getting cut up by a deranged killer.
The Lowdown
Director Jeff Fisher has gone out of his way to establish the reality show aesthetic. Doing some basic Google-Fu, I discover that Fisher has quite an extensive background in television. When you get around the various personalities and faux interviews, the story falls flat. The typical idiots running away from a murderer has been done to death. So, what advantages does small-town hockey add to the mix?
The simple answer is nothing. When the comedy and horror are both mundane, you’re left with a limp-dick film. Something that can’t pass for entertainment in either respect, but has to rely on the odd moment to keep you from shutting off the film. Nestor Carbonell shines in every scene that he gets as the manipulative agent. But, is he memorable? Does he make this film work? Not at all.
I’m always a little reluctant to slam a flick, but I can find no reason to really defend Killer Movie. After watching it three times, I can’t even tell most of the characters apart. Well, the guy who’s killing people is usually the one that’s not so whiny. Plus, Richard Alpert is the Agent. So, there’s that. But, what else? What else is going on here? Why does this movie exist? Why do I have so many questions?
It’s because I’m at a loss. I watch a lot of terrible movies in the course of a year. But, the nondescript ones are the films that break my brain. If you can’t find moments to latch onto or find someone who is especially awful, you feel like the terrible movie beat you. Then, you start to wonder if it was so terrible in the first place. That’s when you rewatch it. If you can stay awake through the second viewing, you are back in the same boat. What happened?
What happened is that weird gray area that comes up every couple of films or so. How do you register a non-entity? Honestly, you don’t. If the acting can’t rise above par, if the direction can’t break out of its novelty and if the genre elements aren’t compelling…you don’t have a film. I’ll give it a basic blip of a score based on the adequate composition of the Blu-Ray itself. Otherwise, it’s a giant joke.
The Package
The
Blu-Ray only sports a behind the scenes featurette. Sure, there’s a theatrical trailer included. But, is that really a special feature anymore? People should start counting that as standard ala menus and a case for the actual disc. The transfer is rather standard. For some reason, the player couldn’t pick up the encode. But, it’s a basic 25 gig disc rundown accompanied by a rather pedestrian Dolby Digital 5.1 track. This review also marks the debut of my new HD screen-capping equipment. If you want, you can right click on the images to view the file and bring up the source file. I’m working on a way to make that easier for you.