Enthusiastic after my recent discovery of Don’t Look on Prime, I took a chance on two more slashers hoping I’d get lucky again. Will Nobody Gets Out Alive and Cinemaphobia fulfill your slasher needs?
NOBODY GETS OUT ALIVE (2012)
Although the kill scenes are really well done, and some are quite brutal, Nobody Gets Out Alive is about as generic as a slasher plot gets. There are no surprises, for the opening scene and the campfire story trope tell you everything you need to know about who the killer is and what’s about to happen to a group that goes camping in the woods.
When we meet the gang, there’s a whole lot of filler as they road trip to their destination. Naturally there’s a rest stop confrontation and a creep with a warning to stay away, and then eventually we get to the campfire scene.
There’s no inbred freak or psycho in a mask here—just a normal vengeful guy with sharp weapons, but he makes good use of them. I was momentarily inspired to become a backwoods killer when a dude taking a piss turned to find the killer sneaking up behind him, and his immediate reaction was “spectacular beard!”
There’s some juicy gore, there are some good chase scenes, and there’s even some torture that made me squirm.
But when the killer finally gets a monologue about his motivations, it’s totally redundant since the movie spelled out what he’s all about already. So this one should be watched just for the kills.
CINEMAPHOBIA (2009)
There is a lot going on in Cinemaphobia. So much in fact that it is distractingly unfocused until the final act.
The movie follows a bunch of people at a horror film festival, and the constant humdrum chats between them feels like Clerks at a movie theater (I totally used the word humdrum).
There are occasional kills along the way, some better than others, like my faves: one at a urinal (shocker) and one involving an arcade game (again, shocker). The film also intersperses death scene clips of the scuba diver killer slasher showing at the theater…which quite honestly looks a bit more exciting than the actual movie.
And finally, there are two wannabe horror film director guys that spend their time chatting up girls to be in their movie.
The pace picks up with just twenty minutes remaining. Unfortunately, the initial plan of the survivors to play dead so the killer will overlook them leads to a majority of the kills being dead duck situations; the victim pretends to be dead by remaining absolutely still, so the killer simply comes up to them and stabs the fuck out of them! This happens several times.
Finally, I don’t think veteran horror fans will be all that surprised with the twist. Best to watch this one mostly for the kills as well.
