It’s a trio of slashers flicks, and I had a major favorite. Let’s find out which one.
BAD CONNECTION (2023)
This is the kind of simple stalker/slasher fun I needed in my life right now. Bad Connection is a blast, with a nonstop chase, a sinister masked killer, a determined main girl, and plenty of blood and violence.
After a douchebag customer ruins her phone, a waitress is gifted a new one by her sexy boyfriend. Actually, it’s not a new one…it’s used and hot off the street because they’re broke.
The main girl discovers a video on the phone of a woman being murdered. Within minutes, a masked killer starts relentlessly pursuing her through a seedy side of town for the remainder of the film. Awesome.
There are plenty of victims to hack up along the way, great suspense scenes, an appearance by scream queen Tiffany Shepis, and Perez Hilton in a minor role as a gay doctor (landing this one on the does the gay guy die? page).
The only real miss in this film is the silly final frame scene. It’s just so derivative and pointless.
KILLER INFLUENCE (2024)
Yet another slasher that relies on the lowest common denominator of current trends…influencers gathering together in a house to get hacked up. I just want a movie where someone kills every influencer through some sort of computer program so we can be done with this era of societal obsession already.
It’s almost an hour before the killer actually kills someone. Until then, a group of multiple female influencers and one male influencer deal with relationships (mostly the main lesbian one), body image issues, and the pressure of being successful by creating the shallow-assed content that people crave these days.
We do get one sex scene with plenty of tits (because it’s a lesbian sex scene), and the group sits in a room full of candles and tells some scary stories. The weird thing is, the girl hosting the party promises it’s going to be the scariest night of their lives, but there’s no pay-off to that promise. I mean, were ghost stories the most creative thing an influencer could think of to entertain and scare viewers? It feels like a whole crucial part of this party is just completely missing.
The real theme here is that influencers have to be really careful of revealing their location because stalkers exist. Yep, that’s it. The masked killer shows up, and in the final act kills a bunch of them, has a body count party, and then chases and fights the final girl. There’s no killer reveal, and no specific motivation.
If you must watch, I’d suggest just hopping over to the fifty-minute mark and starting from there…or a little earlier if you like lesbian sex.
GO AWAY (2024)
I was so excited when this one started at a family Christmas party. But alas, only the opener takes place at Christmas, so this isn’t a holiday horror flick. However, the first sequence has some great low budget charm, with masked home invaders tying up victims and forcing them to decide who dies. It’s a backstabbing hoot, so to speak.
The main focus of the film is a guy going with his girlfriend’s family. Tuesday Knight plays the mom, and Felissa Rose plays the loud-mouthed aunt, providing plenty of mean-spirited humor.
There’s family drama and infighting for a while, discussion of a bunch of murders years before, and a hot bear shirtless in a sex scene.
42 minutes in, there’s a very cool intro to the home invasion. There are knocks on numerous doors all at once. Eek!
Masked invaders bust in, and the killing begins immediately. All I’m going to say is that my three favorite people in the movie all die first. WTF?
After that, the killers release the rest of the victims and force them into a cat and mouse game, promising that if they can get away, they live. The tone of the film shifts, with none of the over-the-top tone presented earlier.
The gore is really good, but there’s not much in the way of suspense or tension, and the low budget look and feel doesn’t allow for much atmosphere. However, despite it being an underwhelming home invasion flick, there are several twists that keep things interesting.
