DVD, VOD | CERT: 18 | DIRECTOR: GREGORY PLOTKIN | SCREENPLAY: SETH M SHERWOOD, BLAIR BUTLER, AKELA COOPER | STARRING: AMY FORSYTH, REIGN EDWARDS, BEX TAYLOR-KLAUS, TONY TODD | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
It says Hell Fest on the cover but you’ll surely be inclined to scrawl ‘Generic 1980s-style Slasher Movie’ on the sleeve should you decide to take a punt on the home entertainment release of this shamelessly derivative stabby horror effort which came and went without leaving much of a Box Office blood trail last winter.
At a sprawling horror carnival called Hell Fest which travels the country during ‘Halloween season’ (it’s just one night!), a young girl, separated from her friends, is confronted by a masked figure who stabs her and hangs her up alongside the carnival’s prop corpses. Fast-forward a few years and Hell Fest is still up and running, and a new bunch of tiresome teens set off for a night of fun, frolics, screaming and assorted cheap Halloween antics. History looks like repeating itself when Natalie (Forsyth) attracts the attention of a strange masked, hooded figure and, inevitably, amidst the hooting and howling and screeching of the hormonal Hell Fest crowd, Natalie and her group of stereotypes become separated, and the body count starts to rise as the killer edges closer and closer to his ultimate prey.
Watching Hell Fest is probably as close as any of us are likely to get to time travel as the whole experience is akin to watching a cheap stalk’n’slash movie on VHS back in the 1980s. There is absolutely nothing new here at all, nothing we haven’t seen quite literally dozens of times before either in more iconic and highly-regarded genre films like the Halloween series or in cheap exploitation titles whose names we forgot the moment we ejected the tape from the video player. In some ways the breath-taking audacity of its lack of originality is quite impressive; this is a film that knows what it is and really doesn’t care. It wants to show us people getting killed in increasingly gruesome fashion (and in fairness several of the deaths are guaranteed to cause a squirm or two), and if you can set aside your critical faculties and accept Hell Fest for what it is, you’re likely to have fun with its brisk pace, its disposable cast of characters (horror hounds will enjoy an appearance by Tony Todd), its inventive slaying spree, and its utter lack of point or purpose. Naturally, the film sets up a sequel but with a worldwide return of only $18 million on a budget of about $5 million it seems likely that Hell Fest – a pleasure you will almost certainly feel guilty about – is now closed for business for good.
