Hell Fest

“Fun Getting In. Hell Getting Out.”

Filmology Rating: 2.5 out of 4

Hell Fest is a film brought to you by the guy who's only Directed one film and it sucked. This movie has the exact same premise as Halloween: innocent, shy girl who focuses on school work, goes out with her much sluttier friends only be be stalked by a man in a mask holding a knife.

I was expecting the worst for this film because the film did not allow critics to review the film before it came out and usually that means the film is terrible. But the trailer for this film looked very creative and it had my interest. And my consensus: this film was a breath of fresh air among others horror films recently.

I actually really liked this film because it was not the conventional horror crap served nowadays. This film is so visually stylistic, innovative and shot so wonderfully well. Right from the opening shot, I knew this film was going to be good. It's such an overused premise, but this film takes the structure and does something really creative with it and places it in a horror theme park called Hell Fest. This filmmaker stretches out tension for as long as he can and creates some wonderful suspenseful set pieces that twisted my expectations.

This film is definitely a slow burn horror film, just like Halloween, so it may bore the average horror film goer. In my theater, people would not shut up and stay seated. People just walked around and commented on the film as it went. It frustrated me so much because this was such an enjoyable film.

There is a lot of jump scares in this, but they fit the environment in which the film takes place in. The type of place where there are attractions like a horror maze where things jump put at you, but the film uses that to its advantage and twists that into the film in a creative way near the end. However, there were still actual jump scares accompanied by that stupid loud, screeching sound effect that did frustrate me.

This film felt like a creative 80s slasher film with lots of creativity and craftsmanship in front and behind the camera. It's a solid 90 minutes and is a wonderful breath of fresh air. I am so sick of hauntings, entities, exorcisms, and stupid priests and nuns, so this film was delightful.

Rating: See It

-Nolan