One clever idea to which you’re TOTALLY committed. That’s all that a horror movie needs to stand out from the pack.
And that’s what you get in Slashers. It’s a Canadian-made parody of those extreme Japanese game shows that people were talking about in 2001. You know, where you solve an algebra problem while a tiger chases you. Or you competitively hit yourself in the head with a hammer for cash prizes. It was a huge influence on the American reality TV explosion. Here, the game is called Slashers and in it a bunch of annoying people get themselves trapped in a confined space while three psycho killers, modeled after classic movie slashers, stalk and murder them. The slashers can kill the competitors. The competitors can kill the slashers. The competitors can kill each other. It’s all okay, according to B-movie law school. If you survive, a multi-million dollar jackpot awaits.
Where this gets smart is that the movie itself is presented as an episode of the TV series with bonus clips of what happens between the commercials when everyone has to freeze in place, however awkwardly (blades at each other’s throats, sometimes), and chit-chat until they go back on the air. Writer/director Maurice Devereaux really cared about this one. You can tell. Resources and talent are limited, but he does his best. It’s a rare shot-on-video movie that takes advantage of the format. It makes perfect sense here.
I don’t watch reality television, but I have seen a little of it here and there and I never thought about this before, but they really are slasher movies without the slasher. A bunch of mental cases in search of fame and who have little in common compete with each other, but instead of getting chainsaw’d to death, their pariahs get voted off or shunned. They have their obnoxious fuckfaces, their vanity victims, their weirdos and occasional likable person. The same people who get voted off the island on Survivor might be the same people who would die first by a slasher’s axe in the movies.
We’ve never stopped remaking The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween. All we do is change the stakes and the setting.