SCARIEST NIGHT OF YOUR LIFE (2018)

Studio:     Jeff Brotherton
Director:    Jeff Brotherton
Writer:     Jeff Brotherton
Producer:  Jeff Brotherton
Stars:     Tyler Thomas Moore, Patrick Luwis, Emily Tender Hall, Iman Karram, Ryan Zimmer, Mikael Mattsson

Review Score:

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Summary:

Five college friends travel to a remote Halloween haunt where they are terrorized by the attraction’s psychotic scare actors.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Brad drives his college friends Kevin, Haley, Jess, and Peter to “Nightmare Farm,” an underground haunt in a remote location, for their annual Halloween tradition. Kevin records the experience with a camera.

Among the masked and unmasked scare actors outside the haunt, the group encounters a strange man in glasses. At the entrance, everyone briefly meets fellow patrons Tom and Melissa, who explain that the haunt doesn’t advertise due to a scandal involving an actor who went too deep with his character.

Once inside the attraction, Brad, Kevin, Haley, Jess, and Peter have their first encounter with a frightening clown named Sprinkles. The five friends then go through the haunt, whose rooms feature an odd undertaker, a masked serial killer, a murderous barber, and a demented doctor, dentist, and toymaker.

During their next encounter with Sprinkles, Brad gets physical with the clown after feeling like the haunt put his friends in legitimate danger. Their altercation escalates when Brad punches Sprinkles. Jess removes Sprinkles’ mask to examine his wound and discovers that the clown’s real face is horribly scarred. Sprinkles summons masked scare actors to attack the five friends, who escape to another room.

Brad, Kevin, Haley, Jess, and Peter agree to leave. However, they become lost in a maze made out of sheets. Haley ends up captured. Sprinkles and several other clowns kill Brad. Men in pig masks murder Peter.

Kevin and Jess run into Sprinkles, who shows them Brad’s body made up like a marionette. Sprinkles attacks Kevin and prepares to kill him when Jess interrupts. Sprinkles chases Jess.

Kevin recovers to rescue Jess from the clown. After dropping Sprinkles to the ground, Kevin and Jess escape to a vehicle outside the haunt. However, the strange man seen wearing glasses when they first arrived captures them.

Having recovered, Sprinkles continues recording with Kevin’s camera to show Jess and Haley chained up as prisoners.

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Review:

I shouldn’t have watched “Scariest Night of Your Life” for a variety of reasons. I’ll only mention two of them.

For starters, it’s the kind of no-budget flick I swore off some time ago. Not that I’m some major influencer or anything, but I’ve been at this long enough that cutting down homegrown horror made with pocket lint can make me feel like an irresponsible bully. Most movies at this under-the-radar level receive maybe one or two formal reviews tops. Being the lone critic’s voice, and an unfavorable one at that, turns on a light I’m not eager to shine. I’ve been menaced by plenty of angry amateur filmmakers or their toadies over the years. The aggravation isn’t worth advising readers that a particular DTV indie isn’t a wise investment of time or money.

Secondly, well, “Scariest Night of Your Life” isn’t a wise investment of time or money. Considering the countless entertainment options sitting at anyone’s fingertips, to willfully choose one this woeful is dropping opportunity down a drain.

Yet I remain eternally fascinated by “found footage.” Plus, for other reasons I cannot precisely pinpoint, films about Halloween haunts also pique my curiosity. I simply ran out of willpower to resist this flimsy first-person tour through make-believe terror where scare actors torment five patrons.

Whenever I criticize a lo-fi “found footage” film, common complaints include lazy improvisational “acting” and entirely nondescript characters. “Scariest Night of Your Life” possesses a script that addresses both potential problems, yet it still comes up well short of heading off either issue at the pass.

The film spends something like 15 full minutes introducing us to the five friends in the most mundane manner imaginable. We get to know their dating statuses, post-college prospects, and basic traits. As per usual, personalities predictably include preppy trust fund guy, flighty Instagram wannabe, and pre-med good girl. There’s also a pushy jock aspiring to be an MMA fighter curiously played by a beanpole who looks to be about 150 pounds if he were filled with cement.

They talk a little bit about their fears. They discuss what they like about Halloween. Really though, the movie mistakes superficial exposition for character development when it’s nothing more than mere “what’s your favorite color?” fluff. Worse, their throwaway walla walla is painfully dull.

Dialogue is at least scripted. Trouble is, rehearsed delivery lets the audience know that it’s scripted. Acting elevates one step above complete greenhorn as everyone actually tries to sell the material with some sincerity. That’s preferable to a careless director putting inexperienced acquaintances in front of a camera and pressing ‘Record.’ This cast just doesn’t have the chops to be believable.

Once the quintet gets inside the haunt, “Scariest Night of Your Life” becomes a series of choppy vignettes. Here’s a random man in zombie makeup crawling toward the camera. There’s a random woman in a coffin opening her eyes as people pass. Demented barber, demented doctor, demented dentist, and demented doll maker are some of the other psychos who come and go with little rhyme and even less reason.

Eventually, the group faces off with the main maniac: a clown named Sprinkles. Sprinkles looks a little like young Steve Buscemi doing a light impression of Burgess Meredith’s Penguin while wearing Heath Ledger’s Joker makeup and Twisty’s clown costume. In other words, he’s a hodge-podge of who knows what. Extreme coulrophobes may find Sprinkles vaguely unsettling, I guess. Everyone else will find him as confusingly disposable as everything else about the film.

If this soothes the sting any, I’ll simply say that “Scariest Night of Your Life” comes off as more ragged than slapdash. Background screaming noises seemingly come from a generic “Sounds of Halloween” CD. Audio pings into ear-piercing crackles whenever someone shouts. And the movie weirdly does a majority of its editing with dissolves, which makes no logical sense for a “found footage” film.

“Scariest Night of Your Life” isn’t actually abysmal. It rubs two nickels together so hard that they disintegrate, but still manages to put mildly more visual value onscreen than peers more poorly produced. However, its simple setup of “madmen terrorize college kids in an underground haunt” composes the full extent of its story, which is neither original nor intriguing.

Review Score: 30

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