Wednesday 3 September 2014

"Massacre at Femur Creek" - a short film review

Director Kyle Hytonen got in touch to tell me about his new horror/comedy short “Massacre at Femur Creek”, which is due to hit the festival circuit shortly, and asked if I’d like to do a review. And never being one to disappoint, agreed to give it the once over.
 
Set in the mid-1980s, a group of high school grads go for a weekend of camping in the woods, and indulging in the typical teenage activities of getting drunk and smoking weed.
 
Unfortunately for them, a maniacal killer also happens to be enjoying the great outdoors, and following a quick throat slashing, the rest of the group find themselves running for their lives. But whilst this may not be the enjoyable weekend they hoped for, when they discover the killer is adversely affected by bright lights, at least they’ll have plenty of Polaroids to remember it by…
 
Clearly inspired by the slasher films of the early 80s (there was a definite "Friday the 13th" influence here), for the most part I actually found this to be quite good fun. I’m a big lover of crude/slapstick humour and the director certainly knows how to ladle it on. Only minor criticism would perhaps be the pacing is a bit slow in the middle. Following the opening murder, we have almost 8 minutes of dialogue, showing the main characters traipsing through the woods, before the film kicks up a gear.
 
OK, that’s not really that long in the grand scheme of things, but given the film only runs about 18mins that’s almost half the films run time. But maybe, that’s just me being impatient. Also, being as this is a low budget short, whilst the acting is passable, its not exactly “Hollywood” standard. But given the films low budget, that’s entirely forgivable.
 
But anyway, suffice to say that overall, I did enjoy the film and it did have me genuinely laughing out loud during some scenes. The film should be playing the festival circuit in the near future, so be sure to keep an eye out for it.
 
You can view a trailer for the short feature on YouTube.
 
And you can find out more about this film on the production companies Facebook page.
 
 
 

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