Review: Political talk in a slasher film?
May contain spoilers.
Was it so bad that they don't allow people to write reviews yet? For some reason I can't find the review option. So permit me to express my review here in the discussions section.
What you have here is a veritable insult to the American Military, as well as a mish-mash of several other types of movies all rolled into a generic slasher type film. I think that the writers and directors make the classic mistake of saying to themselves, "We want our movie to be more than just another ______." But the result of mixing too many ideas in a film only serves to cause it to go out of focus. There simply isn't time to present all of the ideas effectively, so instead they are thrown at you like tomatoes smacking you in the face with dizzying irregularity. It left me wondering if this was a drama, comedy, horror, or a political statement.
For instance, the characters are the usual bunch of cookie-cut types, with the prankster, the militant, the secretly afraid, the stoner, the priss, and the Asian (no really, I can't think of any other way to describe this character).
Each of these characters seems very out of place. If you look at the film in terms of "Well, this is happening right now," then it works. But if you ask yourself how these people ever came to be friends in the first place, you will be left shaking your head. The film makes an effort to develop each character for a while, which almost seems like a waste of time, since the developments are just more of what we already know, and they're going to die anyway.
The prevailing character is the broken soldier. We start the film off with a ridiculous sampling of a soldier under the lash of his drill sergeant's tongue. Somewhere in the middle of this is what appears to be stock footage of soldiers in Vietnam. Yes, you heard me. Vietnam. Not Iraq, which is mentioned several times in this film. The soldier seems a bit young to be from the Vietnam war, if you ask me. This character received no development until the end, when suddenly he launches into a hysterical tirade about.. I don't know. The character makes no sense and would have easily been more interesting if he never said a word.
Add to all of this a huge collection of political dialogue to make the characters seem informed and intelligent and you are left with the possibility that the movie may actually be attempting to make a not-so-subtle political point.
Do I really need to explain how that doesn't really work in a slasher film?
Problems aside, the film is fairly well shot, although the music is the usual canned variety. The pacing is slow, because as I mentioned before, they try to make you care about the characters. The gore is cheesy, and there is not really much of it, which actually works for me. But it works reasonably well, until the development of the bad guy, where it falls on it's face.
Lastly, if I were a veteran, I would truly be offended by this film. The stereotype of the "broken veteran" is so old it hurts. Several times the implication is made that the American military is only for exploiting other nations, and that soldiers are trained to kill people, and nothing else. I know a few veterans, and they hate this sort of belief. For every soldier out there with PTSD, there are hundreds more who came home and started their lives right, creating businesses, starting families, etc. These men and women are our pride, and it's somewhat sickening to see them sold short all the time.