SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (2021)

Studio:     Syfy/Scream Factory
Director:    Danishka Esterhazy
Writer:     Suzanne Keilly
Producer:  Adam Friedlander, Samantha Levine, Tebogo Maila
Stars:     Hannah Gonera, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Alex McGregor, Reze-Tiana Wessels, Mila Rayne

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Three decades after a notorious massacre, a group of girls encounter the same serial killer while partying at a cabin in the woods.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In 1993, Chad secretly spies on his 17-year-old ex-girlfriend Trish Deveraux as she parties with her friends Kim, Diane, and Jackie at a rented lakeside cabin in Holly Springs. Russ Thorn, an unemployed handyman later dubbed ‘The Driller Killer,’ murders Chad outside with a massive power drill. Russ breaks into the cabin and also kills Kim, Diane, and Jackie. Although he drills through her hand, Trish fights off Russ and he seemingly drowns after falling from a pier.

In the present, Trish’s daughter Dana joins her friends Maeve, Breanie, and Ashley for a weekend getaway despite her overprotective mother’s concerns. Maeve’s younger sister Alix quietly stows away in the backseat.

Maeve’s car breaks down. Gas station attendant Dave offers to contact his mechanic friend for replacement parts, although it will take some time before repairs can be made. Stranded, the girls accept an offer from convenience store clerk Kay to rent a nearby cabin, which turns out to be the same place where the murders took place in 1993.

Dave arrives at the cabin to fix the car later that night. Russ Thorn, who had been presumed dead, kills Dave with his drill.

Bored with the party her sister’s friends have, Alix goes outside and finds Dave with his eyes drilled out. Alix rushes back to the cabin to warn everyone. Dana and her friends reveal to Alix that the trip, breakdown, and cabin were all parts of an orchestrated plan to lure Russ Thorn out of hiding so they can definitively kill him and give Dana’s mother closure.

Staying at a cabin across the lake with fellow true crime fans fascinated with the 1993 massacre, John and Matt come over to introduce themselves. Matt becomes suspicious of the girls when he sees they are stocked up on weapons. Matt and John hurriedly return to their two friends named Guy and their other friend Sean. Worried they could get killed, the girls follow after Matt and John.

Guy One leaves the other cabin to urinate outside. Russ kills him.

Dana, Maeve, Alix, Breanie, and Ashley arrive at the other cabin just as Russ kills Guy Two during a brief power outage. Although they remain suspicious of the girls since they didn’t actually see who killed their friend, John, Matt, and Sean go outside in search of Russ. The girls conduct their own search.

Sean steps in with an electric guitar when Dana gets into a confrontation with Russ. Russ kills Sean.

Dana leads Russ into a trap set by her friends, but Russ breaks free. Dana and Russ have another fight outside that ends with Dana breaking the power drill and slashing Russ’s throat. Alix repeatedly stabs the body after Russ falls to the ground.

In the morning, the girls discover they cannot call the police because the Wifi password changed. Uncertain if the girls were justified in killing Russ or if they are merely murdering misogynist men, John and Matt return to their cabin.

Someone kills Matt with an electric saw while he showers. The same person then uses rotating engine blades to kill Ashley while she works under the hood to repair Maeve’s car.

Dana, Maeve, Alix, and Breanie realize Russ’s body is missing. The unidentified murderer shoots through the cabin window with a nail gun and kills Breanie.

Dana runs into John when she flees outside to go for help. Dana and John suspect each other of being a killer, but come to a tentative truce. However, John strands Dana by jumping into his truck and speeding away.

Alex begins violently vomiting. Maeve realizes her sister got sick from the welcome cookies Kay, the clerk who rented out the cabin, left for them.

Dana encounters Kay in the woods. Dana idly explains how she came to the cabin to kill Russ Thorn in hopes of helping her mother Trish heal. Kay lets it slip that she is Russ Thorn’s mother, and she blames the girls for being temptresses that caused her son to be unable to control his killer instincts. Kay injures Dana in a fight.

Dana limps back to the cabin with Kay in pursuit. Kay breaks in and attacks Dana, Maeve, and Alix. Having worried about her daughter’s wellbeing, Trish unexpectedly arrives to rescue Dana. Trish and Dana take down Kay together. Trish, Dana, Maeve, and Alix embrace.

---

Review:

Impatient people might tune out of 2021’s “Slumber Party Massacre” before this remake of the 1982 cult classic even reaches its 15-minute mark. Based only on initial impressions, you could hardly blame them for getting tired of all the tropes.

First we have a familiar flashback. It’s 1993. A troupe of teenage girls gathers at a remote lakeside cabin in the woods for a night of pizza, booze, and cracking jokes about dildos.

Outside, Trish’s disgruntled ex-boyfriend Chad spies on the ladies as they dance in their underpants. Chad also spies a second stalker peering through another window. Before Chad knows it, that stalker stabs the business end of a spiraling power drill right into his torso. Now ‘Driller Killer’ Russ Thorn is free to return his attention toward the women, which he does by committing three more murders before seemingly falling to an underwater death.

Jump up to the present. Trish, sole survivor of the prologue’s slayings, isn’t happy about her daughter Dana embarking on an outing similar to the one that ended in slaughter. But off she goes anyway on a weekend holiday with three friends and one of their stowaway kid sisters. What could possibly go wrong?

This is a horror flick so, everything. Dana and company’s standard scary movie setup starts with their car breaking down, stranding them in the middle of nowhere. In addition to a grungy hick gas station attendant telling them they’ll be out of luck for a while, there’s a shifty-eyed shopkeeper at the nearby general store. Conveniently, she has a solution for the situation. There happens to be a cabin for rent just up the road, though no one notices it’s the same place where Dana’s mother was nearly murdered three decades ago. Worse, it looks like the Driller Killer might not be at the bottom of the lake after all. That means this second girls night of drunken underpants dancing now has new items on the itinerary like finding reasons to split up, tripping while running away, and everything else that appears on the first page of the Slasher 101 handbook. Could “Slumber Party Massacre” be any more cliché?

So, yeah. It’s easy to see why someone might turn off the TV before their eyes finish a full counterclockwise rotation.

Get this though. There’s actually a method to “Slumber Party Massacre’s” deceptively rote madness. Stick with it through the first 30 minutes and you’ll be rewarded with an unexpectedly novel twist that only a liar would ever tell you he could see coming. Once this revelation retroactively upends expectations by adding “un” to what was previously predictable, an “aha!” balloon pops and “Slumber Party Massacre” becomes exponentially more enjoyable.

“Slumber Party Massacre” isn’t a horror-comedy in the overt way that “Zombieland” qualifies as a horror-comedy. Dialogue still slips in sass at regular intervals as a reminder to not regard the movie as strictly serious, which it certainly isn’t. You have to swallow this wickedly witty reimagining as a casual satire not just of the original “Slumber Party Massacre” specifically, but of routine slasher beats in general, and then entertainment comes easy.

Simply swapping traditional gender roles in a couple of scenes leads to some great gags, including a hilarious explanation for how a room fills with feathers prior to a slow-motion pillow fight. Although it’s made more to motivate a “Who’s on First?” exchange, another good bit comes from giving two red shirts the same name, Guy, which simultaneously lampoons how negligibly generic these kinds of characters really are.

Fragile-ego alphas out there in the audience will no doubt take offense at “Slumber Party Massacre’s” unsubtle takedowns of toxic masculinity and metaphors mirroring common concerns of current culture. Forget their feelings. If misogynist men would stop perpetuating their own stereotype by complaining about “woke” agendas every time someone other than a straight white male takes a prominent part in a movie, maybe female filmmakers wouldn’t have to keep taking them to task.

There are more legitimate gripes to be made anyway. A made-for-TV sheen cheapens “Slumber Party Massacre” in several places, such as oddly generic credits and segues seemingly written to be cliffhanger cuts to commercial breaks. Then again, “Slumber Party Massacre” was a Syfy Original, so some of that should be expected. Other quibbles include a jarringly abrupt ending (not even a post-credits stinger for the guy who got away by stranding one of the girls?) and a comparatively languid last act after a second twist pivots the plot at a point where other slasher movies usually end.

Getting back to those who might moan about the movie however, I respect how director Danishka Esterhazy appears to give zero f*cks about pissing off people who treat fiction franchises like precious properties required to do things one way and one way only. She previously rattled some pearl-clutchers prone to easily-ruined childhoods by reconfiguring the beloved “Banana Splits” (review here) as a killer cadre of rampaging robots, and the fog of nostalgia prevented those poor folks from finding the fun in that film too. I’m sure Esterhazy is probably itching for original projects and bigger budgets. But with a two-for-two track record on injecting fresh energy into forgotten IP, Esterhazy evidently purloined Herbert West’s serum, and I’d be eagerly onboard with whatever mothballed title she wants to dig up and re-animate next.

Review Score: 75

---