Slaughter (2009) Review

Written by: yourmotheratemydog715   

And the quest to watch all eight films from this year's After Dark Horrorfest continues. After "From Within" and "Perkins' 14", the third film to come from Netflix was "Slaughter". Well, even though the first two I watched were just average, I'd definitely have to say "Slaughter" is the worst so far.

I watched "Slaughter" with virtually no idea what it was about, but for those of you who want to know the plot, here you go: In order to escape from her abusive ex-boyfriend, Faith decides to spend some time with Lola, some chick she met in a bar. While she seems to be just the breath of fresh air she needed in her life, Faith soon finds out that not all is right with Lola and her family.

I'm not gonna give away anything else about the plot, because one of the few things I actually enjoyed about the film was the "twist" at the end. It's pretty well-done and not that predictable.

But, here's the main problem with "Slaughter". It's boring as all hell. Absolutely nothing happens in the first hour of the film, except for a few fleeting shots of some bloody guys running away from something. Seriously, if you watched the first hour of this film with no knowledge of what kind of movie it was, you'd swear it was some sort of Hallmark original movie. I mean, it's got it all. The troubled girl with the abusive ex-boyfriend, the other troubled girl with the family problems, the two troubled girls meet and learn to forget the past and become friends. It's ridiculous! Unless you really love watching two girls talking about how their past sucked and how they wish they could start over, you're going to find the first hour as excruciatingly boring as I did.

And, it's all pretty sad in the end. Because the last half hour is actually really fun. The film completely switches gears from girls who may or may not be lesbian for each other talking a lot to a half hour of balls-out action with oddly lesbian torture scenes, shotgun blasts to the face and abusive boyfriends repeatedly asking what the hell is going on. It's all quite entertaining, which is a shame considering how not entertaining the first two-thirds of the movie was.

And that's exactly why I'm in the dilemma I'm in right now. Do I not recommend the movie because the action is really too-little-too-late? Or I do I somewhat recommend the movie just because the last half hour is actually really good? Arggh. I really don't know.

Alright, after a long twenty seconds of intense thinking, I decided I'm going to give "Slaughter" a very mild recommendation. If you can sit through the first hour of dullness (you can just fast forward through it all if you want, you're not missing anything), you'll find a fun little romp with a delightfully grim ending. It just makes me mad that there was so much wasted potential in this movie. It could have been really great. It wasn't. 5 out of 10